American Black Duck

The adult male has a yellow bill, a dark body, lighter head and neck, orange legs and dark eyes. The adult female has a similar appearance. Both sexes have a shiny purple-blue wing patch, which is not bordered with white as with the Mallard.

Their breeding habitat is lakes, ponds, rivers, marshes and other aquatic environments in eastern Canada including the Great Lakes. Black ducks interbreed regularly with Mallard ducks, to which they are closely related.

They are migratory and many winter in the east-central United States, especially coastal areas; some remain year-round in the Great Lakes region.

This duck is a rare vagrant to Great Britain, where, over the years, several birds have settled in and bred with the local Mallards. The resulting hybrids can present considerable identification difficulties.

These birds feed by dabbling and grazing on land. They mainly eat plants; near salt water, their diet may include molluscs and aquatic insects.