Greater Scaup Images

Greater Scaup Images, Facts and Information:

Aythya marila

• Greater Scaups are large diving ducks. The males rounded, black heads with a green glossy iridescence, yellow eyes, and blue-gray bills. They have black tails, necks, breasts, barred gray flanks and white sides and bellies, their wings are black tinged with brown and they have a broad, white band over their secondaries and most primaries. Great Scaup females are brown overall white white ear patches and at the base of the bill, white on their mantles, scapulars, and flanks.
• Greater Scaups are migratory. Greater Scaups breed in Alaska, Canada, Siberia, and Northern Europe and is present in the Aleutian Islands year round. Greater Scaups spend winters along the coasts of North America, Europe and Japan but can be found inland in some areas. They prefer ponds, lakes and marshes.
• Greater Scaups eat aquatic insects, small bivalves, snails, mollusks, crustaceans, seeds, and vegetative parts of aquatic plants.
• Greater Scaups lay 5 to 11 eggs which hatch in 24 to 28 days. The females incubate and they are monogamous.
• A group of ducks can be called a “raft”, “paddling”, “flush” or “brace” of ducks.
• Greater Scaups can live to be more than 20 years old.

I hope you enjoy viewing my Great Scaup photos.