Ring-Necked Duck (Aythya collaris)

County List:

Rule:

Forested or Mixed Forested/Nonforested Landscapes

      (Lake or Pond or River) 
   adjacent to:
      (Any Emergent Vegetation or Bog)

Habitat List:

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Literature:

Habitat: During the breeding season, Ring-necked Ducks are birds of bogs, sedge-dominated wetlands and small lakes associated with coniferous forests. Mendall stated that most nests were located on islands or floating materials in wetlands. He noted that no nests were found beyond the margin of the sedge-shrub zone. Mendall also found that nearly 70% of the 411 nests studied were located in sedge-sweet gale and leatherleaf communities.

Broods utilize nearby emergent plant communities. A brood I observed on three occasions used shallow water with hardstem bulrush, water shield, and bur-reed within a flooded dead timber stand. Following the breeding season, males gather in large, deep, freshwater marshes where they molt and spend the remainder of the pre-migration period. Females and broods follow them to the larger marshes as soon as young are able to fly. Foods of Ring-necked Ducks include tubers of bulrushes and wild celery as well as the seeds of pondweeds, bur-reeds, and water shield. The diet of downy young includes invertebrates with caddis-fly larvae predominating.

Habitat: Breeding: Flooded swamps, fresh water marshes, and bogs with abundant sedge, sloughs and beaver flowages near larger wooded lakes or rivers with submerged and emergent vegetation, often in heavily forested areas.

Although it mixes freely with other diving ducks on large lakes in winter, the Ring-neck is also found on small, tree-lined ponds, and associates with dabbling ducks on shallow waters. A strong and fast flier, it is able to take flight by springing up directly from the water, without the laborious take-off run of most diving ducks.

Habitat: Wooded lakes, ponds; in winter, also rivers, bays. In summer on freshwater marshes, ponds, and bogs, mainly in openings in forested country. In migration and winter on ponds, lakes, slow-moving rivers, sometimes on coastal estuaries, but generally not on saltwater bays.

Diet: Mostly aquatic plants, insects. Diet varies with season and habitat. Feeds on seeds, stems, and roots of many aquatic plants, including pondweeds, sedges, smartweeds, grasses, algae, and others. Also eats aquatic insects and mollusks. Young ducklings feed mainly on insects.

Nest: Site is on dry hummock, clump of grasses, sedges, weeds, lined with down.