Bucephala clangula: Common Goldeneye - RI - 2015

The Common Goldeneye is a Nearctic migrant that nests near lakes and rivers throughout much of the spruce-fir forests of Canada and Alaska. This species winters throughout the conterminous United States and coastal Alaska. An estimated 1 million Common Eider nest in North America, with some indication of a population decline along the Atlantic Coast (seaduckjv.org). This species is one of the last migratory waterfowl to reach Rhode Island during late fall. In Rhode Island, they occur in small flocks (usually < 20 birds) in most open water areas, including throughout Narragansett Bay, coastal ponds, and rarely at inland lakes that are not frozen. This species is not surveyed annually by the USFWS during aerial surveys, so accurate population trend estimates for North America are unavailable. The US EPA has coordinated a waterfowl survey in Narragansett Bay every January for the last decade, in 2013 Common Goldeneye accounted for 1,123 of 19936 individuals detected. Conservation concerns include the negative impacts of urbanization on water quality, oil spills, human disturbance affecting foraging and roosting birds, and uncertainty about harvest levels of this species (most of the harvest of this species occurs in the Mississippi Flyway, followed by the Atlantic and Pacific Flyways, seaduckjv.org). Management actions include reducing the loss of mature forests on their breeding grounds (the availability of nesting cavities limits their populations; seaduckjv.org), minimizing the impacts of urbanization through better treatment of urban runoff, minimizing the potential for negative impacts of oil spills on marine birds (e.g., double-hulled barges), developing and implementing a standardized survey to track long-term population trends, and gaining a clearer understanding of harvest levels of sea ducks. This species is sensitive to changes in food quality, thus they are a good bio-monitor to assess changes in environmental quality (seaduckjv.org).