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Wood Duck — printable fact sheet
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Wood Duck
Aix sponsa
The wood duck (Aix sponsa) nests in tree cavities, sometimes 15 metres above the ground and often over dry land rather than water, which creates one of the more startling sights in North American natural history. The morning after they hatch, the ducklings, less than a day old a…
Did you know?
- Wood Duck ducklings are able to swim and find their own food just hours after hatching, even after leaping from heights of up to 15 meters (50 feet) to the forest floor.
- Day-old wood ducklings jump from tree cavities up to 15 metres above the ground and bounce off the leaf litter unhurt, because they are too light to be injured by the fall. Wood ducks lay eggs in each other's nests, and a single cavity can end up with more than 30 eggs from several different hens. They have claws on their webbed feet and can perch in trees, which almost no other duck can do. They were nearly extinct by 1900 and were saved partly by one of the first artificial nest box campaigns in history.
What I learned
Draw the wood duck
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