White-headed Duck

Appearance

Adult males have a grey and reddish body, a blue bill and a largely white head with a black cap and neck. Adult females have a grey-brown body with a white face and a darker bill, cap, and cheek stripe. The white-headed duck is a small diving duck some 45 cm (18 in) long.

Length is 43–48 cm (17–19 in) and weight is 580–750 g (1.28–1.65 lb).

Published measurements include mass about 737.

Range and habitat

Their breeding habitat is large tracts of open water, such as lakes and ponds among them artificial water bodies, with dense stands of aquatic plants to provide shelter and nesting sites. Individuals are fairly frequently reported well north of their breeding range, but as with many wildfowl, the status of these extralimital records is clouded by the possibility of escapes from collections. Its breeding habitat is lakes with open water and dense vegetation at the margin.

Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.

Diet

It dives under water and feeds on aquatic vegetation as well as some animal matter.

In crisis

It is more likely to swim away from a perceived threat than to fly. Populations are declining, mostly due to loss of habitat and pollution, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature has rated the bird's status as "endangered". This duck is considered endangered due to a large reduction in populations in the last 10 years.

Most of this decline is due to habitat loss and hunting, but interbreeding of the Spanish population with the introduced ruddy duck (Oxyura jamaicensis) is a more recent threat. The white-headed duck is one of the species to that the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA) applies, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature has rated the bird's conservation status as being "endangered".

CITES lists this taxon on Appendix II. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.

White-headed 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 White-headed duck, Wikidata item Q241399. 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.