🐦Cute Crested Duck: Looking for Fish to Feed🐦

Happy day everyone, especially bird lovers and all feathered friends. Today I share some beautiful images taken in a park in the city of Mérida Venezuela, of a Crested Duck or Wild Duck (Sarkidiornis melanotos) where they are freely in this small stream hunting or observing these fish. This beautiful bird inhabits aquatic environments in tropical and subtropical regions of America, Africa and Asia. It can be found in many places in Venezuela especially in the Venezuelan Andes, as well as in many South American countries such as Colombia, Ecuador, Chile, Argentina and Uruguay. They are usually seen in freshwater lakes and generally in areas cleared of scrub, where grass or trees grow with little vegetation.

Its main food is grasses, tender vegetation, seeds such as corn, sorghum, millet, and small fish. Their reproduction is oviparous, they nest once a year. The nest is built on the ground between tall vegetation or within holes in trees. They lay eight to twelve eggs, incubation is approximately 30 days and is carried out by the female. The male is noticeably larger than the female and exhibits a prominent black caruncle at the base of the bill that becomes more noticeable when they are in the period of conquest of the pair and the difference of other ducks. Its white plumage dotted with black, black wings with greenish and purple reflections make it a beautiful bird.