2012 Spotlight Bird

Spotlight Bird: Ruddy Duck

By Bill Fenimore

Art: Kendra Bybee, Student Art Contest Winner

The spotlight bird of the 2012 Great Salt Lake Bird Festival is in the waterfowl family. It is the Ruddy Duck. The Ruddy Duck belongs to the stiff tailed family of ducks. It is a small chunky duck that holds its tail upright and fanned. The drake develops a beautiful blue bill in breeding plumage. It has a black cap that encompasses the eye with white cheek patches. The body is a rust-red. It is only 16 inches in length with a 24 inch wing span.

Female Ruddy Ducks have a blackish gray bill. the cheek is white with a dark brown horizontal streak. The upper parts are a brown gray.

Ruddy Ducks are a diving duck and feed on vegetable matter on pond bottoms. They can slowly submerge like a grebe and will swim away underwater when disturbed rather than flying away.

The female builds the nest with grasses and cattails in dense marsh vegetation. She incubates 5-17 creamy white eggs for 26 days. The young leave the nest within a day of hatching. The young can feed themselves but are tended by the female.

This is a fairly common duck of ponds, lakes and along the Jordan River Parkway and similar bodies of water in Utah, as well as wetlands along Great Salt Lake.

Bill Fenimore, owner of the Layton, Wild Bird Center (BirderB@gmail.com) and author of the Backyard Birds of Utah.

Saturday, May 19^th: 12 – 1 pm Workshop on Ruddy Duck, Davis County Legacy Events Center

Field Trips likely to see the Ruddy Duck have a bird symbol