Critter Class Duck. MVK: OK - first question - I may be a meal for foxes, hawks, eagles, herons, pike, crocodilians.

Transcription

1 Critter Class Duck Flying mallard duck-female Led by: MVK and Abby August 18, 2011 Good evening wildlife friends. OK - first question - I may be a meal for foxes, hawks, eagles, herons, pike, crocodilians. Comment Abby: Is it my animal? Yes Abby. Folks Abby picked the animal for the night. Second fact - some of us are dabblers. duck - mallard Shirley - you are too smart. Yes the animal/bird tonight is the duck!!! Some ducks are dabbling ducks and some are diving ducks. Dabbling ducks feed on the surface of water or on land, or as deep as they can reach by upending without completely submerging.[4] Along the edge of the beak there is a comblike structure called a pecten. This strains the water squirting from the side of the beak and traps any food. The pecten is also used to preen feathers. Info from Wikipedia Photo by: Stephen Friedt hhh...duck - like scoot - that messy food in the NGB nest. I dreaded duck meals. Critter Class Ducks 1 8/18/2011

2 That was a sea duck I believe. Sea ducks are divers. Are all the questions/answers going to be bird related, so I don't answer too quickly...:):):) Oh no - you never know what the secret animal/bird will be. Don't forget, some ducks may also be eaten by people. Especially in Peking. Yikes, they look like TEETH! I had no idea a ducks mouth could look like that! I never noticed that either. Very interesting. Duck, that s what we do when Ed comes on!! Diving ducks and sea ducks forage deep underwater. To be able to submerge more easily, the diving ducks are heavier than dabbling ducks, and therefore have more difficulty taking off to fly. Some ducks like the mergansers are able to swallow whole fish! The others have the characteristic wide flat beak designed for dredging-type jobs such as pulling up waterweed, pulling worms and small mollusks out of mud, searching for insect larvae, and bulk jobs such as dredging out, holding, turning headfirst, and swallowing a squirming frog. To avoid injury when digging into sediment it has no cere. but the nostrils come out through hard horn. Hi MVK...so good to see you. I have always called dabbling ducks...puddle ducks... Mark - I like that name. I had no idea there were dabbling ducks or diving ducks - I thought if it looks like a duck, sounds like a duck and walks like a duck - it is a duck!!! LOL Critter Class Ducks 2 8/18/2011

3 Muscovy ducks originated in Russia I believe. They are found in South America. Some feral ones have taken residence in North America. Yes they have red warty looking things around their faces. Photo by Alex Although they are cute little hatchlings - something sure goes wrong as they get older!! Photo by: Materialscientist How about "sittinducks?" and lame ducks Well sittingducks are those that just sit and lame ducks are those that have lame excuses for stuff - but we are not supposed to talk politics on here. LOL Hi Marianne - We have dabbling ducks at our cabin pond and lately there has been a family. At what age do the young separate from the parents and go their own way. Unfortunately I do believe some of the babes have met their demise. We also have had mergansers and loons. Thanks for your help. Well - they split when they are big enough to find food for themselves. Here is some breeding information. The ducks are generally monogamous, although these bonds generally last a single year only. Larger species and the more sedentary species (like fast river specialists) tend to have pair-bonds that last numerous years. Most duck species Critter Class Ducks 3 8/18/2011

4 breed once a year, choosing to do so in favorable conditions (spring/summer or wet seasons). Ducks also tend to make a nest before breeding. Although mother ducks are very caring and protective of their young, they are not above abandoning some of their ducklings if they are physically stuck in an area they cannot get out of or are not prospering due to genetic defects or sickness brought about by hypothermia, starvation, or disease. Ducklings can also be orphaned by inconsistent, late hatching where a few eggs hatch long after the mother has abandoned the nest. How different are ducks and swans teacher. Swans have long necks. Swans are closely related to geese. They are the Cygnus genus - which does include ducks and geese. Swans mate for life though can divorce is there is nesting failure. Ducks are monogamous for the year. just cuz i didn't know... The cere (from the Latin cera: wax)[1] or operculum[2] is a soft, fleshy swelling found on the beaks of certain birds. Hawks, parrots, doves, skuas and budgerigars are among the birds that have ceres. The word 'cere' is often used synonymously with 'beak' or 'nose', although the two are not identical. The cere plays a role in indicating the reproductive stage of certain dimorphic birds, and also has a key function in respiration. (from wikipedia) Yes eagles have a cere. Hi again MVK, we used to have a duck pond not far from where I live. When my children were little I took them there to feed the ducks. There was always one nasty duck that would honk his head off and chase the other ducks away. That duck was probably a female???? It seems that females are the more vocal and do the quacking. I didn't know that either. The word duck comes from Old English duce (diver) Critter Class Ducks 4 8/18/2011

5 Some call females ducks and males drakes but hen and drake are the real titles. Not all ducks are wild - some are domesticated - the white ones you see in private ponds and lakes, farms. OK Abby - thank you for your suggestion. I think ducks are very popular here. There are many many types of ducks too! Boy I sure learned a lot. I grew up on Long Island in NY--we inherited a muscovy duck that someone won as a prize at a fair (honest!)...we had a small farm in suburbia and got all kinds of critters! Anyway, Wally the duck was a character--he perched on the front steps and used a cat dish as his bath tub (we had barn cats--but don't tell Ed) and loved sleeping on top of the car! He had his own home and kiddie pool but much preferred to live in the center of the goingson...i miss him! Awww. Did you know that wood ducks use holes in trees for their nests? The Muscovies used to have floating day care centers--a mama in the front and at the rear with 25 babies in between. Very cute until the snapping turtles started reducing the numbers. Oh no - some large fish, such as pike, also like ducklings. Dabbling Duck - Definition: (noun) A type of shallow water duck that feeds primarily along the surface of the water or by tipping headfirst into the water to graze on aquatic plants and vegetation. These ducks are infrequent divers and are usually found in small ponds, rivers and other shallow waterways. Dabbling ducks also forage on land for seeds and insects. Physically, they have flat, broad bills and float high on the water while swimming and they tend to be very vocal birds. Species of dabbling ducks include mallards, northern shovelers, American wigeons, American black ducks, gadwalls and cinnamon teal. Are coots (sp?) ducks? They seem to be very plentiful. There is an eagle rugby game with a coot in that NG special. Critter Class Ducks 5 8/18/2011

6 Coots are a water fowl but a different family from ducks. i SAW MANY CANVASS BACKS FLY BEAUTIFULLY ACROSS THE OHIO RIVER ONCE. TELL ME ABOUT THEM? It is a large North American diving duck. Photo by: Adrian Pingstone hmmm, interesting Can a duckling survive if the mother has abandoned the nest? Probably not - too many predators around. It would not be impossible but highly unlikely. They also need the female and sometimes the male - to keep them warm. My street is called Grebe Lane...named after diving ducks that look a bit like chickens floating in the water. Very cute. Photo by: Maga-chan They have red eyes too. Critter Class Ducks 6 8/18/2011

7 How about duck-walk? Old English Too? Duck walk??? I have heard of a cat-walk. Picture from 1918 of different types of loons. Is it true that a BLACK swan can kill you?? Shelly - if you Google black swan theory - I think that is where that came from. Animal Diversity Web That is a pretty duck, with the white feathers. teacher what is the name? The one with the white, black and red is a canvasback. Critter Class Ducks 7 8/18/2011

8 @8:33 you said that ducks abandon nests- is that always true? I had heard of a swan that kept over eggs well after the time they should have hatched. Which is more common? No ducks do not always abandon them - but they will abandon them easier than some birds will. I am not sure of the percentage of swans versus ducks. Good evening teacher. Love "nightclass"! We have had Anhingas along the James River here in Lynchburg the last couple of years. They are fun to watch. Anhinga are found in warm areas. They are like comorants and cannot waterproof their feathers. When they get wet - they have to let their feathers dry before flying off. Animal Diversity Web: Anhingas Hi MVK!!!! Hope you are well!! Just stopped by to say hi and ask, since we are talking about ducks, what kind of duck are the big white ones with orange beaks and feet. We used to have one named Daffy (of course) and he used to keep dogs out of our yard. He would spread his wings and go honking after them. Hysterical site!!!! Domesticated ducks are ducks that are raised for meat, eggs and down. Many ducks are also kept for show, as pets or for their ornamental value. Almost all of the varieties of domesticated ducks are descended from the Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos), apart from the Muscovy Duck (Cairina moschata) 20 years ago when I moved to FL. our lake had Muscovy ducks. They would mate with the Mallard ducks. They were only half ugly! joke They have removed all the Muscovies now. Critter Class Ducks 8 8/18/2011

9 LOL Keith I bet they looked strange. Actually our Grebes are Pied-Billed. Small and cute. As soon as you get a camera focused on one, it dives! Quite shy but adorable. Photo by: MDF Pied-billed grebe Loons fit in perfectly right here EGS!! Never knew bread was wrong to feed the birds until I joined the eagle chat a couple of years ago. Lots of people are still feeding bread to the birds because they don't know how wrong it can be for them. We need to get the word out to those who don't know the harm it does. I have learned so much from this chat. Re: the "NO BREAD" message for the ducks, as per Amanda///well, I used to take her to feed the ducks at the local park lakes when she was little. She loved it...now I remind her of that. She tells me that was before we knew any better. Well, that is what education is all about... The loons that we have are beautiful with their black/white bodies. The trouble with them is that they choose to rest on our swimming float. Every time someone goes out to swim, that person has to take a scrub brush to clean the loons' deposits. We still love to have them. Also have herons that are quite pretty. We used to have a black swan at the lake where I camped as a youth. He was actually very sweet and everyone loved him. But the pair of white swans were a whole different story. The male used to kill all the baby ducks - he was just nasty! Critter Class Ducks 9 8/18/2011

10 I didn t know that breed of duck had babies in trees. Like you said they don t go back home. A little sad but then they have a whole lake. There is a Native American legend about how the loon got its 'collar' (the white feathers on its neck). A blind Medicine man was walking along the lake. He was getting dangerously close to the water. A loon called out to him, which warned him he was too close. In gratitude, the medicine man threw his beaded necklace in payment. The necklace wrapped around the loon's neck and they are still marked this way. (reader digest version) Hi MVK, I was middle way my duck story and got timed out-----rats---:) Anyway, on a pond near my home many ducks have lived over the years. At one time there was a female mallard that seemed to have some type of problem. We finally decided she was blind. A friend, on her way to work one day, saw her in the middle of the road. As she slowed to stop, another female came from the pond to the one in the road. She nudged, waddled, nudged, waddled that duck until she got her out of the road and back on the bank by the pond. They then went back to the pond and swam off. Needless to say it made my friend's day as well as mine when she told me the story. How wonderful critters are! Oh my - a seeing eye duck! How wonderful. Is it OK to feed them, and if so what should we be using instead of bread? I used to use cracked corn - but I am sure that isn't good for them either. We need to ask Amanda. Poking my head in between things here. Do ducks and chicks imprint when they are born, like eagles? I know some teachers hatch eggs in their school rooms and wondering how it effects the birds? They must - they sure seem to know what they are and who mom is. Critter Class Ducks 10 8/18/2011