Typical Mergansers
Mergus
Mergus is the genus containing the typical mergansers ( mur-GAN-sərz), fish-eating ducks in the subfamily Anatinae.
The common merganser or goosander (Mergus merganser) and red-breasted merganser (M. serrator) have broad ranges in the northern hemisphere. The Brazilian merganser (M. octosetaceus) is a South American duck, and one of the six most threatened waterfowl in the world, with possibly fewer than 250 birds in the wild. The scaly-sided merganser or "Chinese merganser" (M. squamatus) is also an endangered species; it lives in temperate eastern Asia, breeding in the northeast and wintering further south.
6 branches of this genus, most-observed first · about 4 known species
Common Merganser
speciesMergus merganser
Red-breasted Merganser
speciesMergus serrator
Scaly-sided Merganser
speciesMergus squamatus
Brazilian Merganser
speciesMergus octosetaceus
Common × Red-breasted Merganser
hybridMergus merganser × serrator
Auckland Islands Merganser
speciesMergus australis
Where it lives
Recorded sightings
—
geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.
Drag the globe to turn it. Dots are where records exist, not a range map; darker means more records.
In the old herbals & bestiaries
Ten Books of Exotic Things
Carolus Clusius · 1605 · p.122
The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands, Vol. 1
Mark Catesby · 1777 · p.299
Garden of Health (Hortus Sanitatis)
Jacob Meydenbach · 1491 · p.584
Treasury of Medical Matters of New Spain
Francisco Hernández · 1651 · p.735
Ortus sanitatis
1491 · p.647
History of Animals, Book I: On Viviparous Quadrupeds
Conrad Gessner · 1554 · p.953
In the stacks
Searching the stacks…
Every page naming Mergus in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 6995.