Red-headed duck: photo, description, area

The family of ducks is quite extensive, uniting more than 100 species. This is a peanut, a duck, a duck-steamer, a cloak-net, a multicolored teal, a mallard, a broad-leaved one, a Brazilian croach, a musk duck, a red-headed duck and others.

The article will tell more about the latest variety of duck family.

Description

The red-headed duck is a duck, whose weight reaches 1400 grams. The bird has a dense body, a little squeezed from the sides. During the flight, he raises his paws upwards, because of what he takes his own curved shape. The size of the head is equal to the size of the beak. According to the color, it is red-brown with a violet shine in the male (drake), while the duck has a head of red color. The wingspan is 0.6-0.8 meters. The red-headed duck-drake is larger than the female. She has her own interesting plumage. Back and chest darkish-gray, can be brown. The breast and abdomen are light gray in color. The color of the beak from gray turns into dirty blue. The paws of both sexes are massive, gray in color. The drake has a chest with black shoulders, a gray back, and sides are permeated with a transverse ripple. The beak, unlike the female, is pale blue, from above dark.

The habits

The red-headed diver is an excellent diver, immersed in water for 30-40 seconds. This bird is silent. The female has a hoarse voice, mostly she screams during the flight. The drake, during current, occasionally produces a sound similar to whistling.

The red-headed diver, whose photo is in the article, hardly takes off, but flies quickly. His wings make a sharp sound when they wave. He leads a mobile life, most of which he spends on the water.

Representatives of this species can live up to 20 years, but the average duration of their life is much less. Mainly long-livers are birds in captivity, where they are looked after, treated and properly fed.

Red-headed duck: habitat

Where do these birds live? Initially, the dives were inhabited in the steppe and forest-steppe zone , but gradually the habitat expanded, and the birds settled on the warm lakes of Europe, located in the north and west. This is due to the low water availability of habitual places of settlement due to natural changes and the appearance of lakes that are convenient for breeding in industrial cities in Europe.

The territory of settlement (nesting area) is very extensive: it stretches from Britain to Lake Baikal, from the Caspian and Black Seas to the Amu Darya and the legendary Semirechie. The southern boundary of the dive community is the region of anhydrous solonchaks. In the USA and Canada, it can be found on northern lakes (Athabasca, Buffalo, Manitoba), in the east in the delta of the Nebraska River and in the highlands of the Sierra Nevada in the west of the continent. In Africa, these birds live in the south to the Cape Verde area, and also in Arabia.

It spends winter in the Baltic, North Sea, Black Sea, Mediterranean and Caspian shores, and also on the Japanese islands, on the Syrian and Iraqi coasts, in the coastal regions of Iran and Pakistan and in the north of India.

Moulting is an important period in life

At a certain time, drakes of the dive are sent for a short-term molt. Every year they fly to the same place, where they gather in large flocks. Moulting takes place mainly in the lacustrine forest-steppe. The first time they molt in the summer is the discharge of the wedding dress, again in the fall - before the new marriage games. Young drakes for the first time molt in September and then completely change the plumage.

The female passes the moulting period on the nest, and if it does not have a brood, it moults along with the males.

Routes of migratory dives

Nykes are migratory and sedentary. The latter live exclusively on the islands of Britain. Here also fly dives from Norway, from the north of Germany, from the Baltic and from the north of Russia. On the nesting grounds, they are sent in pairs after the ice leaves the reservoirs.

On the Kokchetav lakes (northern Kazakhstan) and lakes in the Kurgan region, a small part of birds from the Urals, Western Siberia and the Khanty-Mansiysk District are moulting. Most of the drakes ringed there fly to the Mediterranean, where they winter. They fly, passing the mountains of the Southern Urals, the lowlands of the Don and southern Ukraine. A small part of them remains on the Black Sea coast. Some fly to the Caspian.

After the British wintering in March, the time of flight arrives, which is carried out until the end of April. North-western Black Sea areas of birds begin to leave in early April. Ajaria is abandoned at the end of March. They fly from Iraq in March. At the nesting site, the dive is late. In the Middle Volga, it appears in the twenties of April, but until the end of May you can still see small flocks of migratory birds. In late April, you can observe the massive flight of these birds through Tatarstan.

Wintering on the Japanese islands, red-headed dykes fly away at the end of April. Droplets fly first, after two weeks later females and young birds fly.

Nesting

The duck likes to nest on the deep lakes of the taiga, the forest-steppe, where there are a large number of reeds, and in open terrain. In the nesting area birds fly in small flocks, almost touching the water. Good neighbors with other species of ducks, do not compete with them for feed production, since they feed mainly at night. When they multiply, they prefer a vegetable menu. During the flights and on wintering the birds unite in huge flocks.

A method for locating the nest attached to the stems of water cereals is common. The basis is a fallen tree from a reed or cattail, in which the middle burial is done. Then the red-headed dive, described above, lays it down, plucked from the breast, and frames the down roll in the form of a roller. This floating structure is well attached and based on water thanks to the stems and roots of aquatic plants. Another nest is built on hummocks and hillocks, overgrown with sedges, on the shore, near the water. It is made from the leaves of coastal plants, in diameter is 30 cm, its height is 25 cm.

Food

Places of feeding for them are water reservoirs, in which there is a lot of aquatic vegetation, sometimes not quite large. Also, they do not avoid salt lakes in which there is food. Nutrition in the dives is both vegetable and animal (larvae, mosquitoes, midges, tadpoles, etc.). The diet varies depending on the season. In transitional - spring and autumn - vegetable food, and in winter and summer - animal.

Reproduction

How does the red-headed dive multiply? The female reaches sexual maturity after the first (sometimes and second) year of life, the spleen ripens in the second year. Matrimonial games are conducted on the nesting grounds. A few drakes usually take care of one female, which they surround on the water and show dancing, throwing their heads high, and make a wheezing sound. The right to choose a partner remains with the female. With him, she mates, makes a nest and hatches eggs. In April - May ducks begin to create masonry. In some nests, there may be eggs of two or three females, as some negligent mothers throw their eggs into the nests of neighbors. Sometimes the masonry dies for an unknown reason, then the female lays eggs in a new place. In the mantle of the dive - from 8 to 12 eggs, their color is greenish-blue. The female hatch eggs for about 25 days.

Offspring of a dive

Appearing chicks weigh from 40 to 50 grams and are in the nest until they dry. Draeches do not take part in caring for ducklings, they do not approach the nest. First they are nearby. Feed with females, then gather in small gay-mouthed flocks. Leaving the nest, the duck closes the chicks down.

Ducklings on the third day already perfectly dive and can catch bugs. The fluff of the hatched chicks is very thick. On the second day they independently procure themselves food, peck insects and seeds of plants, dive. Monthly chicks are already fully fledged, and two-month olds are able to fly. The chicks are flocking into flocks, there are thickets of reeds and sedge. When danger ducklings are buried in them.

In early August, they leave their nests, go to a nomadic life.

Care of the person

How is the red-headed dive guarded? The Russian Red Data Book contains a record of this bird due to the fact that the number of this species has decreased from 60 to 10-15 thousand. This is due to the intensive development of the territories on which the dive settles, which is a commercial bird.