Duck
Duck is the common name for a number of species in the
Anatidae family of
birds. The ducks are divided between several subfamilies listed in full in the Anatidae article. Ducks are mostly aquatic birds, mostly smaller than their relatives the
swans and
geese, and may be found in both
fresh water and
sea water.
Most ducks have a wide flat
beak adapted for
dredging. They exploit a variety of food sources such as
grasses,
grains and
aquatic plants,
fish, and
insects. Some (the
diving ducks) forage deep underwater; the others (the
dabbling ducks) feed from the surface of water or on land. To be able to submerge easier, the diving ducks are heavier for size than dabbling ducks, and therefore have more difficulty taking off to fly. A few specialized species (the
goosander and the
mergansers) are adapted to catch large fish.
The males (drakes) of northern species often have showy
plumage, but this is
moulted in summer to give a more female-like appearance, the "eclipse" plumage. Many species of ducks are temporarily flightless while
moulting; they seek out protected habitat with good food supplies during this period. This moult typically precedes
migration.
Some duck species, mainly those breeding in the temperate and arctic
Northern Hemisphere, are
migratory, but others are not. Some, particularly in
Australia where rainfall is patchy and erratic, are nomadic, seeking out the temporary lakes and pools that form after localised heavy rain.
Ducks are sometimes confused with several types of unrelated water birds with similar forms, such as
loons or divers,
grebes,
gallinules, and
coots.
In many areas, wild ducks of various species (including ducks farmed and released into the wild) are hunted for food or sport, by
shooting, or formerly by
decoys. From this came the expression "a sitting duck" to mean "an easy target".
Ducks have many economic uses, being
farmed for their
meat,
eggs,
feathers and
down feathers. They are also kept and bred by aviculturists and often displayed in zoos. Most
domestic ducks were bred from the wild
Mallard,
Anas platyrhynchos, but many breeds have become much larger than their wild ancestor, with a "hull length" (from base of neck to base of tail) of 30 cm (12 inches) or more and routinely able to swallow an adult
British Common Frog,
Rana temporaria, whole.
*In a wildlife pond, the bottom over most of the area should be too deep for dabbling wild ducks to reach the bottom, to protect bottom-living life from being constantly disturbed and eaten by ducks dredging.
*The sound made by some female ducks is called a "
quack"; a common (and false)
urban legend is that quacks do not produce an echo.
The word
duck meaning the bird, came from the verb "to duck" meaning to bend down as if to get under something, because of the way many species in the
dabbling duck group feed by upending (compare the
Dutch word
duiken = "to dive").Ducks are included in Gnome WarsThis happened because the older
Old English word for "duck" came to be pronounced the same as the word for "end": other Germanic languages still have similar words for "duck" and "end": for example, Dutch
eend = "duck",
eind = "end"; compare
Latin anas (
stem anat-) = "duck",
Sanskrit anta (masc.) = "end",
Lithuanian
antis = "duck".
In
2002,
psychologist Richard Wiseman and
colleagues at the
University of Hertfordshire (
UK) finished a year-long
LaughLab experiment, concluding that, of the animals in the world, the duck is the type that attracts most
humor and silliness; he said "If you're going to tell a
joke involving an animal, make it a duck." The word "duck" may have become an
inherently funny word in many
languages because ducks are seen as a silly animal, and their odd appearance compared to other birds. Of the many
ducks in fiction, many are silly
cartoon characters (see the
New Scientist article [
1] mentioning humor in the word "duck").
Image:Comb duck.jpg|African Comb DuckImage:duck-on-ground.jpg|Mallard drakeImage:ruddy.shelduck.arp.2.750pix.jpg|Ruddy Shelduck - not a true duck but a member of the TadorninaeImage:Wood_duck_eclipse.jpg|Male Wood Duck in eclipse plumageImage:Female Mallard.jpg|Female MallardImage:Male_Mallard.jpg|Mallard drakeImage:Muscovy-duck-1.jpg|. Male Muscovy duckImage:Ducks2.jpg|Pair of Mallard Ducks.*
Domesticated duck â€" ducks kept for meat, eggs and down
*
Duck pond*
List of fictional ducks*
"The quack doesn't echo" urban legend (from
Snopes.com)
*
Guide to keeping ducks*
Duck videos on the Internet Bird Collection
*http://www.thecontentwell.com/Fish_Game/Ducks/Duck_migration.html
*http://soundwaves.usgs.gov/2002/11/fieldwork.html
*http://www.ibiblio.org/pardo/birds/archive/archive2/msg00397.html
*http://www.ducks.org/waterfowling/flyways.asp
*http://www.gamebird.com/ducksgeeseswans.html
*http://www.gamehuntersguide.com/Encyclopedia/Animals/Birds/Diving%20ducks/Tufted%20duck.htm (good for foreign names)
*http://seaducks.org/subjects/MIGRATION%20AND%20FLIGHT.htm (useful looking abstracts)
*http://www.nrdc.org/greengate/wildlife/duckf.asp
*http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/nature_20030616.shtml (
ruddy ducks' impact on
white-headed ducks)
*
Free ebook of Ducks at a Distance, by Rob Hines at
Project Gutenberg - A modern illustrated guide to identification of US waterfowl.
