Ruddy Duck (Oxyura jamaicensis)

County List:

Rule:

Mixed Forested/Nonforested or Nonforested Landscapes

      (Lake or Pond or Sewage Lagoons & Farm Ponds)
   adjacent to:
      Any Emergent Wetland

Habitat List:

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Literature:

Habitat: Grassland ponds and prairie potholes remain its favored breeding habitats, but the Ruddy Duck has adapted to marshy lakes, ponds, and even sewage lagoons in many non-prairie locales as well. Primarily vegetarian, these diving birds feed mainly on seeds, leaves, and tubers of sedges and pondweeds. Dense stands of cattails, bulrushes, or reeds on shorelines or marshes adjacent to open water provide nesting cover. Ruddy Ducks usually anchor their bulky, basket-like nests slightly above the water surface to stalks of these emergent plants, which are often arched over to form a concealing canopy above the nest. As nest foundations, the birds may use muskrat lodges, floating logs, or old nests of other ducks.

Habitat: Fresh marshes, ponds, lakes; in winter, salt bays. Breeds on fresh or alkaline lakes and ponds with extensive marshy borders and with areas of open water. In winter on protected shallow bays and estuaries along coast; also on ice-free lakes and ponds in the interior, including those with little or not marshy border.

Diet: Mostly seeds, roots, insects. Feeds on the seeds and roots of plants including pondweeds, sedge, smartweeds, coontail, and grasses. Also eats aquatic insects, mollusks, crustaceans, rarely small fish. Insects and their larvae may be main foods eaten in summer.

Nest: Site is in dense marsh vegetation over shallow water. Nest is a woven platform of grasses, cattails, lined with down, a few inches above water and anchored to standing marsh growth. Sometimes built on top of old muskrat house or coon nest.