The Ruddy Duck is a stiff-tailed duck that lives throughout North America. It nests in dense marsh vegetation near water. They dive and swim underwater to look for seeds and roots of aquatic plants, aquatic insects and crustaceans.
As a result of escapes from wildfowl collections they are now also established in Great Britain from where they have spread widely into Europe.
The Ruddy Duck is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List and was last assessed in 2014 by BirdLife International. This species has an extremely large range, and hence does not approach the thresholds for Vulnerable under the range size criterion (Extent of Occurrence <20,000 km2 combined with a declining or fluctuating range size, habitat extent/quality, or population size and a small number of locations or severe fragmentation). Despite the fact that the population trend appears to be decreasing, the decline is not believed to be sufficiently rapid to approach the thresholds for Vulnerable under the population trend criterion (>30% decline over ten years or three generations). The population size is very large, and hence does not approach the thresholds for Vulnerable under the population size criterion (<10,000 mature individuals with a continuing decline estimated to be >10% in ten years or three generations, or with a specified population structure). For these reasons the species is evaluated as Least Concern.
This week we've added the Ruddy Duck as a new Birdorable bird. These ducks live throughout North America. As a result of escapes from wildfowl collections they are now also established in Great Britain from where they have... Read more »
