Perching ducks
Wood Duck
Aix sponsa
North America's showiest duck, a tree-nester dressed in iridescent color.
- Length
- 47–54 cm
- Wingspan
- 66–73 cm
- Weight
- 450–860 g
- Conservation status
- Least Concern
About this duck
Wood ducks live along wooded swamps, beaver ponds and slow rivers, where they perch on branches and nest in tree hollows. Hunting and habitat loss made them rare by the early 1900s. Legal protection and nest boxes, put up by the thousands from the 1930s onward, brought them back, and today they are a common sight again.
How to spot one
Drakes have a glossy green, crested head with crisp white lines, a red eye and a red-based bill. Females are gray-brown with a white teardrop around the eye and a crest of their own.