Endangered
Maccoa Duck
Oxyura maccoa
The Maccoa duck is a stiff-tailed diving duck found across Eastern and Southern Africa.
Appearance
As members of the stiff-tailed duck group, Maccoas are often found wading in the water with their tail feathers cocked upwards.
Published measurements include mass about 820.
Range and habitat
This includes lakes, ponds, salty flooded water pans, dams, river mouths, and even sewage ponds. While breeding, these ducks enjoy similar habitats to those described above, but with one exception. As mentioned, the Maccoa duck is found throughout the southern and eastern countries of Africa.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
The Maccoa duck is an omnivore whose diet consists primarily of aquatic invertebrates and plants. When foraging underwater for vegetation, Maccoa ducks will eat a variety of plants - but seem to prefer species from the Persicaria and Polygonum genera - and will feed on their seeds, roots, and other plant debris.
The male Maccoa ducks are polygynous - meaning a single male will mate with multiple females - and they aggressively defend their breeding territory. After mating, females remain in the male's territory and either build a new nest out of sedges, reeds, and down, or sometimes occupy the pre-existing nests of coots and grebes.
In crisis
Maccoa Duck is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Maccoa Duck, Wikidata item Q279939. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
