By mid-April, most winter birds have left. Pine grosbeaks and redpolls have gone north, but the spring ducks have arrived in their best finery.

An interesting transition happened last week. I drive by the intersection of Hogan Road and State Street in Bangor every day. State Street is close to the Penobscot River.

There is an eddy there, and in March and up to April 7, a small flock of common and Barrow’s goldeneyes were feeding there. They are diving ducks, as opposed to mallards, which feed in shallow water and tip, but don’t usually dive.

The eddy has rocks, mud and water plants underwater. There are snails on the rocks, insects under the rocks and water plants growing in the mud, all food for diving ducks.

Sometimes I would stop and watch the goldeneyes as they flew, swam and dove. Sometimes the males would pump their heads up and down to show their splendid colors – iridescent green on the commons and iridescent purple on the Barrow’s – and their flashy white spots – a move intended to impress the females.

I stopped to see the ducks on April 8. They were diving. But when I looked at them with binoculars, I saw they were not goldeneyes, they were ring-necked ducks. It’s an odd name for them – you can almost never see the brown ring around their black necks.

The goldeneyes, winter ducks, had left for Labrador. The ring-necked ducks, spring ducks, had arrived from the south. Spring is here.

Ring-necked ducks don’t care for salt water, even in winter. They spend the winter in the South on fresh water, often in forested swamps. In the spring in Maine ring-necked ducks appear when the ice goes.

The males and females spend several weeks swimming together. The females find a good place to make their bulky nests on the edge of water in marshes and in bog ponds, or in shrub swamps, where there are good hiding places.

The females lay eggs one per day, up to eight or 10 eggs. Then they start to incubate the eggs which all hatch together, or at least on the same day, after 25 to 29 days.

Ducklings are precocial – that is, they are covered with down, and can walk and swim within about two hours after hatching. They follow their mother and look for small insects and soft water plants. They like to be hidden. They can be seen in channels in marshes, or in other places where emergent plants grow out of the water.

Meanwhile, the males are molting into their “eclipse” plumage. In that plumage, they look like females – brown and camouflaged. The females molt later in the season, once the young are independent. Then in the fall, they all fly south for the winter. But in the meantime, birders will enjoy seeing them in this part of Maine.

For information on Fields Pond Audubon Center, call 989-2591.