The Common Pochard is a medium-sized species of duck found in parts of Europe and Asia. Their preferred habitat is marsh and lake water measuring a meter in depth or greater.
Common Pochards feed by diving or dabbling. They consume a wide variety of food items, including water insects, small fish, and aquatic plants.
An adult male Common Pochard can be recognized by its grey back, black breast, and red head. They resemble the Redhead of North America. Female Common Pochards are a dull shade of brown.
From IUCN Red List: The Common Pochard is listed as Vulnerable
on the IUCN Red List and was last assessed in 2015 by BirdLife International. This species has an extremely large range in both the breeding season and in winter, and an extremely large population. The population was not thought to be declining sufficiently rapidly to approach the threshold for Vulnerable under the population size reduction criterion. However new information suggests the population has declined rapidly across the majority of the range, and it has therefore been uplisted to Vulnerable. Although the species might be expected to benefit from a reduction in eutrophication, this does not appear to have been the case.
Today's new bird in our annual Birdorable Bonanza is an Old World species of duck: the Common Pochard!
The Common Pochard is a migratory duck found across parts of Europe and Asia. They ... more