I was watching the ducks in the Chicago River, because well I like to snoop on ducks. After all you never know what they might be planning.
Anyway the river was especially clear, and I saw them even when the appeared to be still in the water, there little hind legs (OK they don’t have front legs, but it sounds better to use the phrase “Little hind legs”) were still paddling.
So my question is do ducks (and other water birds like Swans, Geese, Grebes, Loons etc) float even if they don’t paddle? Like if I tied their legs together would they sink, if they couldn’t paddle?
Of course they float. Ducks paddle constantly because water has currents that will send them crashing into the weeds or the rocks if they don’t work to maintain their position. They paddle very little on slow-moving water.
No “maybe” about it. The Chicago River is waaaaay cleaner than it was back then. There must be tons of Chicago River websites that can detail this for you, but the whole watershed is much clearer than ever before. Hell, the zebra mussels have cleaned up Lake Michigan so much that it looks like the water off Jamaica. Of course, there are biogists who are very concerned about all that, but the point is that the lake is crystal clear these days.
To put it bluntly, a dead duck floats. That’s how water dogs retrieve them. Paddling doesn’t enter into it. It’s a simple matter of feathers holding air.
I’m fairly sure even a plucked duck would float because they have so much fat. I guess we could find out.
No it doesn’t.
ETA: The tv show Mythbusters actually tackled the stupid claim that “a duck’s quack doesn’t echo”; maybe they’d pluck a duck for science. (Surprisingly, they did come up with something: a duck’s quack and its echo are hard to tell apart, so if you heard a bunch of ducks quacking, you might hear their echoes without realizing it.)
No they cleaned it up a lot. I think the ducks and geese like it 'cause the river banks are pretty much reduced to a “canal-like” metal on each side. Then they have steps of wood where the old industrial (that don’t exist anymore) building used to be. These wood planks collapse and give the ducks places to build their nests. It’s probably easier to guard them since the raccoons and such can’t sneak down the metal. If they want to attack the ducks they have to splash into the water.
Plus in a lot of places they pump oxygen into the river. It makes huge foam bubbles. I don’t know if it helps but the ducks seem to like to swim into the bubbling water, then the bubbles kick them right back out.
Also a lot of the Chicago River north of North Avenue, has been converted from old factories to lofts for Yuppies. So the ducks probably get fed too.
