What do wild ducklings eat?!

-

 July 2022

Ducklings are very cute and nice for watching. Maybe when you saw their various feeding techniques some questions crossed your mind.




What are they eating? Do ducklings of all species eat the same food?

General information in the beginning

Age classes

I – only downy feathers: Ia, Ib, Ic

II – partly feathered: IIa, IIb, IIc

III – fully feathered, flightless



Duckling diet is related to duckling age which reflects phase of feather development. Speed of duckling development vary among species. Teals (Anas crecca) grow faster than Mallards (Anas platyrhynchos), and diving ducks e.g. Canvasback (Aythya valisineria) slower than Mallards. Moreover, in different kinds of habitats, speed of duckling development can vary.

Zones of feeding

Above water, water surface, subsurface water, bottom mud and flats

Feeding techniques

Feeding techniques of dabbling ducks:

  • catching flying insects
  • pecking insects from vegetation and ground
  • surface feeding
  • dabbling

Last two techniques include bill-tip level straining, nostril-level straining, eye-level straining, head-level straining, neck-level straining, up ending.

Feeding techniques of diving ducks:

  • diving
  • pecking
  • surface feeding
  • dabbling (except up ending).


Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) brood - age class Ic


 

Duckling diet

After hatching, ducklings leave the nest and follow their mother to the water. They search for food by themselves.

All newly hatched ducklings need a lot of easily digestible proteins, which they get from invertebrates. There is not so much difference in species. During first two weeks animal part in duckling diet represents around 90% or more.

Small ducklings of dabbling ducks such as Mallards, Teals, Widgeons (Mareca penelope) use mostly as feeding technique surface feeding, specifically straining and pecking. Hatchlings are very skillful in catching flying insects, however, they are not yet very proficient in catching fastly swimming invertebrates. They also peck insects from plant leaves and land.


Wigeon (Mareca penelope) brood - age class Ia

 

One of the most general food type of downy ducklings are cladocerans, a group of zooplankton living in the water surface. Cladocerans can be very abundant in the vegetation of duck weed, in flooded areas. From insects they eat midges (Chironomidae), may-flies (Ephemeroptera), crane-flies (Tipulidae), flies (Brachycera), spiders (Arachnidae), pond-skaters (Gerridae), emerging or drying dragonflies (Odonata),…


Wigeon (Mareca penelope) duckling pecking insects from leaves - age class Ic

 

Ducklings usually stick to the shore near macrophyte vegetation. There one can find invertebrates on and above water surface in high densities. For example midges are small per item but can be locally very dense as they are patchily distributed. When the patch is detected, ducklings can get good amount of food.


Teal (Anas crecca) brood - age class IIb

 

In age class II, the first signs of specializations start to be visible . As ducklings are growing and developing, the diet is changing and starting to resemble that of adults. Ducklings start to include more vegetative matter into their diet. They are also more selective for invertebrates.


Wigeon (Mareca penelope) ducklings - age class IIa


In the end of age class II, ducklings catch less flying insects and eat less insects from vegetation and ground. They are able to reach deeper below the water surface. Ducklings include more larvae into their diet and aquatic invertebrates such as water louse (Asellus aquaticus). Amphiponds can be large and highly mobile. They are not available for surface feeding, but for larger ducklings they are very suitable.

Wigeon ducklings from third week switch their diet almost exclusively to plant food. Similarly, Gadwalls (Anas strepera) become since their third week herbivorous. Most preferable feeding aquatic plants for Wigeons and Gadwalls are pondweed (Potamogeton sp.), green algae Cladophoracae and duckweed (Lemna sp.). Moreover, Wigeon ducklings can forage on grass.


Wigeon (Mareca penelope) brood foraging in a park - age class IIc
 

Mallard age class III mostly search for food below water surface using head-level straining and secondly neck-level straining. They also do dabbling in mud.


Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) duckling dabbling in mud - age class IIc - III 

In contrast, diving ducklings of Goldeneye (Bucephala clangula) of age class I, few days after hatching (up to 18 days), mostly search for food by diving and catching mainly freely swimming invertebrates. This allows them to feed on open water. Their diet does not very much differ from adults.


Goldeneye (Bucephala clangula) brood - age class IIb
 

They eat for example dragonfly larvae, dytiscid larvae, water louse larvae and midge larvae. As they are growing and their downy feathers change, they dive more deeply and add more invertebrate species of bigger size into their diet.

Diving ducklings can from diving feed very effectively. For example, Tufted ducklings (Aythya fuligula) aged 14 – 25 days can on one dive catch up 14 chironomid larvae.

Have a nice duckling watching!



References:

  • Bengtson, S. A. 1971: Food and feeding of diving ducks breeding at Lake Myvatn, Iceland. –Ornis Fennica 48: 77–92.
  • Chura, N. J. 1961: Food availability and preferences of juvenile mallards. – In Transactions of the North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference (Vol. 26, pp. 121-134).
  • Danell, K. & Sjöberg, K. 1980: Foods of wigeon, teal, mallard and pintail during the summer in a northern Swedish lake. – Viltrevy 11: 141–167.
  • Eriksson, M. O. 1976: Food and feeding habits of downy goldeneye Bucephala clangula (L.) ducklings. – Ornis Scandinavica: 159–169.
  • Giles, N. 1990: Effects of increasing larval chironomid densities on the underwater feeding success of downy tufted ducklings Aythya fuligula. – Wildfowl 41: 99–106.
  • Gollop, J. B., & Marshall, W. H. 1954: A guide for aging duck broods in the field. – Mississippi Flyway Tech. Sect. 14pp.
  • Nummi P. 1985: The role of invertebrates in the nutrition of dabbling ducks. – Suomen Riista 32: 43–49 (In Finnish with English summary).
  • Pehrsson O. 1979: Feeding behavior, feeding habitat utilization, and feeding efficiency of juvenile mallards (Anas platyrhynchos L.) as guided by a domestic duck. – Viltrevy 10:193–218.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cooperative feeding of Common Mergansers

-
Image
 September 2022 Common mergansers ( Mergus merganser ), also known as Goosanders are diving ducks who mainly eat small fishes. Their daily requirement of fishes is around 400 g. Mergansers have different strategies of hunting them. They fish individually, but also cooperatively in small or large flocks. Fishing in flocks is a very impressive strategy. Their aim is to target a fish, or better a fish school, and push it together to shallow shore water where fishes can be easily caught. Mergansers are usually firstly moving slowly in loose formation, looking in short intervals under water surface for prey. When the fishes are located, the chase begins: birds rush rapidly on the water and drive fishes to the shore. In short distance runs, Mergansers have wings folded, but in distances more than few meters, they run with the aid of their wings. During this chasing run, Mergansers pack into a dense formation. When the fishes are pushed to the shallow water, some Mergansers dive repea...
Read more

My traditional Christmas in Finland

-
Image
 December 2022 A real winter fairy tale awaited us when me and Petri celebrated Christmas in the Finnish countryside with his mum and her husband.  The travel itself was incredibly romantic. Four hours in the train, a snowy landscape with frozen lakes passing by, and we were excited for Christmas. For the first time in my life, I was in a dining wagon. I had already discovered that Finns are not used to prepare homemade sandwiches. However, they don't mind buying something in a shop, where they often reach for a karjalanpiirakka , but they won't prepare the classic bread with something. That's why they need trains with a dining wagon, which are not common in the  Czech republic , because there we have supplies from home. When we travel in the  Czech republic , our backpacks are stuffed with food and the only reason someone would visit a dining wagon is for a beer. I am a classic Czech who doesn´t travel without at home prepared snack. So, the day before our trip I wa...
Read more

Finnish Laskiaispulla - heaven in the mouth

-
Image
Laskiaispulla is one of my favourite Finnish sweet pastries.  It´s a light fluffy yeast dough, in Finnish pulla , cut and filled with almond paste or strawberry marmalade and decent amount of whipped cream. Extremely delicious! Now it´s a very good time to enjoy it, because it´s connected to the fasting before Easter when the meat is avoided. It pops up in cafes and shops, but the best is homemade anyway. Baking feels cosy and it´s nice to fill home with cardamon smell. For me, yeast dough was always challenging. Czech sweet pastry is also based a lot on yeast dough, and I like it very much, so I tried it several times. But the result wasn´t often as it should be. Sometimes my trials ended up hard and dry or had strong yeast smell. I think that I was making mistake in the method. Perhaps when the dough was supposed to be rising for couple hours and I couldn´t catch the right moment when it was ready.  Also, my dough was often too liquid, so I was adding later more and more ...
Read more