White-winged wood duck
posted in Animal Species, Latest News |
The scientific name of the white winged wood duck is Cairina scutulata. It is mostly found in countries like Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam.
The male and female have a white head and neck which is spotted with black. The bill is orange, dappled with black. The wings are tipped with white. The male is more colored than the female and the female is smaller than the male. Single birds or pairs are most commonly seen, but sometimes groups form around waterholes in the dry season.
They live in pools and marshes in dense, swampy forest where they depend on trees for roosting and nesting. The White-winged Duck is very secretive and feeds mostly at night on seeds, grain, rice, snails frogs and fish hence they are omnivores by nature.
Their mating display is very simple. The male swims with his neck arched and stretched forward making pumping motions. This is rarely answered by the female.
Females lay up to 15 greenish-yellow eggs in a hole in a tree, a forked branch, or hollow trunk. The eggs are incubated for around 30 days. The chicks are dark brown with lighter under parts. They fledge after about 14 weeks.
This species depends on swampland and forest, two of the most threatened habitats on the planet. In the past there may have been as many as 500,000 of these birds. Now only a few thousand remain and numbers are still declining. The conservation status of these birds is endangered.