Red List Twenty Two – Goldeneye

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Dear Readers, there has been at least one of these glorious sea ducks present at Walthamstow Wetlands on several occasions this year, but every time I visit I manage to miss him. What a treat it would be to see one! Goldeneyes breed in a few places in Scotland, but mostly they are winter visitors, and they are Red Listed because the wintering population has dropped by 55% from the mid 1990s. What is going on? It isn’t altogether clear: the best interpretation (for the ducks themselves, if not for birdlovers in the UK) is that the Goldeneyes are ‘short-stopping’ during their migration – if the winters are getting warmer in Europe, they may well choose to migrate for a shorter distance, to somewhere a bit closer to home. On the other hand, it may be that habitat disturbance, hunting and the ingestion of lead bait used by anglers is actually decreasing their population. Let’s hope it’s the former.

The Goldeneye’s rather unusual scientific name means roughly ‘bull-headed clanger’. You might remember that Alexander the Great’s horse was called ‘Bucephalus’, which wasn’t a compliment. These ducks have tennis-ball shaped heads and apparently no neck, which only adds to their appeal, to me at least’. But how about that ‘clanger’ bit? Well, here are five males and a female during their courting display. See what you think. This was recorded by Alan Dalton just outside Stockholm in Sweden.

They also have wingbeats that sound as if they had a Doppler effect built in  – recorded here by Uku Paal in Estonia.

But if all that splashing and general carry-on in the first soundclip has gotten you intrigued, have a look at some Goldeneyes during their courtship display here. The film starts off with one reason why Goldeneyes might be getting rarer. Who’d be a female duck? Though the whole display is extraordinary to watch, and it has a strange combination of tenderness and testosterone.

Male Goldeneye displaying (Photo by Andrew Reding https://www.flickr.com/photos/seaotter/32817183454)

One conservation success with these birds has been that the tiny Scottish breeding population, which was in single figures in the 1970s, has now increased to over 200 pairs. This may well be because these are ducks that will nest in nest boxes – as soon as this was realised, nest boxes went up in prime sites close to water and lo and behold, more Goldeneyes bred. There were some worries about predation by pine martens, and competition from Mandarin ducks, but so far the population seems stable.

Common Goldeneye images from the ever wonderful Crossley Guide https://crossleybooks.com/species/common-goldeneye/

And finally, how about that James Bond film, Goldeneye? You might know that Ian Fleming’s house in Jamaica was called ‘Goldeneye’, and that he was a keen birdwatcher. But is there a link? In fact the name came from a wartime intelligence operation, which was actually designed by one Commander Ian Fleming, who travelled to Gibraltar to set up the plan. The fear was that there would be an alliance between the Germans and Franco in Spain, and Operation Goldeneye planned to leave some operatives in place in Gibraltar if this occurred, so that they could coordinate sabotage missions and ensure communications were received by the Allied forces. In the event, no such alliance occurred.

This does beg the question of who named the Operation ‘Goldeneye’ in the first place. Could it have been named after the duck? I wonder if Fleming had a hand in naming it. I guess we will never know.

Fleming’s Goldeneye Estate in Jamaica (Photo by By Banjoman1 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15532437)

 

 

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