Scaups
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Greater Scaup (scroll down) ... Lesser Scaup ... New Zealand Scaup
The Greater Scaup (Aythya marila), just Scaup in Europe, or colloquially known as "Bluebill", is a small diving duck. The Greater Scaup's name may come from "scalp", a Scottish and Northern English word for a shellfish bed ("probably" the same word as the scalp of the head), or from the duck's display call scaup scaup. It is usually silent when not breeding.
The Greater Scaup is one of the species to which the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA) applies.
Distribution / Range:
The Greater Scaup (Aythya marila) breeds on the ground by lakes and bogs on the tundra and at the northern limits of the boreal forest across Arctic and subarctic regions of northern North America, Europe and Asia.
Greater Scaup migrate southwards to winter in flocks to coastal waters.
In North America, Greater Scaup populations have been on a steady decline since the 1990's. Biologists and conservationists are unsure of the reasons for decline. Some researchers believe a parasitic trematode found in snails may be to blame.
Diet / Feeding:
The Greater Scaup mainly eats mollusks and aquatic plants, obtained by diving and swimming underwater. There is a report of four Greater Scaups swallowing leopard frogs (with body length about 5 cm (2 inches)) which they dredged out of a roadside freshwater pond.
Description:
The adult Greater Scaup is 42–51 cm long with a 71–80 cm wingspan, larger than the Lesser Scaup. It has a blue bill and yellow eyes. The male has a dark head with a green sheen, a black breast, a light back, a black tail and a white bottom. The adult female has a white band at the base of the bill and a brown head and body.
Nearctic Greater Scaup are separable from Palaearctic birds by stronger vermiculation on the mantle and scapulars, and are considered a separate subspecies, A. m. nearctica. Based on size differences, a Pleistocene paleosubspecies, Aythya marila asphaltica, has also been described from fossils recovered at Binagady, Azerbaijan.
Copyright: Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from Wikipedia.org
New Zealand Scaup
The New Zealand Scaup (Aythya novaeseelandiae) is a diving duck endemic to New Zealand.
Diet / Feeding:
Greater Scaups mainly eat mollusks and aquatic plants, obtained by diving and swimmming underwater.
Ducks generally feed on larvae and pupae usually found under rocks, aquatic animals, plant material, seeds, small fish, snails and crabs.
Feeding Ducks ...
We all enjoy ducks and many of us offer them food to encourage them to come over and stay around - and it works! Who doesn't like an easy meal!
However, the foods that we traditionally feed them at local ponds are utterly unsuitable for them and are likely to cause health problems down the road. Also, there may be local laws against feeding this species of bird - so it's best to check on that rather than facing consequences at a later stage.
- Click here to find out which foods to feed them that will offer the nutrition they need to survive a cold winter and remain healthy
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