{"id":14103,"date":"2013-04-07T09:35:42","date_gmt":"2013-04-07T15:35:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=14103"},"modified":"2013-04-07T09:35:42","modified_gmt":"2013-04-07T15:35:42","slug":"canvasbacks-feeding-and-fighting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/07\/canvasbacks-feeding-and-fighting\/","title":{"rendered":"Canvasbacks – Feeding and Fighting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Because of its striking appearance the Canvasback is often referred to as the “aristocrat” of ducks.\u00a0 But as you’ll see, it’s difficult to look aristocratic with your face, head and neck slathered in mud.<\/p>\n

This species often feeds on the muddy bottom of ponds, consuming both plant and animal material (omnivorous) by\u00a0sieving or filtering\u00a0the mud through its bill.\u00a0\u00a0 It dives vertically straight down to the bottom and feeds in the mud in a perpendicular position.<\/p>\n

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\"canvasback<\/a><\/p>\n

This is the male Canvasback.\u00a0\u00a0The wedge-shaped head and sloping bill of the species are uniquely adapted to probing into the mud with the least resistance possible.<\/p>\n

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\"canvasback<\/a><\/p>\n

As you can see, this male has visited the mud before.\u00a0\u00a0From the\u00a0angle of the head as it enters the water you can see that\u00a0it’s the intention of the bird to go straight down.<\/p>\n

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\"canvasback<\/a><\/p>\n

When they come up\u00a0they orient their bodies horizontally again and passively float to the surface (usually very close to where\u00a0they entered it)\u00a0using their positive buoyancy, which means that they break the surface almost like a submarine – in a mostly horizontal position.<\/p>\n

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\"canvasback<\/a><\/p>\n

This bird is just breaking the surface.\u00a0 Besides the thick layer of mud on its head and neck it still has a thin layer of muddy water over its entire body and it’s already begun to strain the mud in its bill as indicated by the stream of muddy water coming out.<\/p>\n

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\"canvasback<\/a><\/p>\n

They often look pretty silly when they first come up.<\/p>\n

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\"canvasback<\/a><\/p>\n

This shot gives a pretty good look at the mud in the bill after much of the water has been strained out.<\/p>\n

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\"canvasback<\/a><\/p>\n

They try to keep as much of the mud off their heads as possible but it’s a losing proposition…<\/p>\n

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\"canvasback<\/a><\/p>\n

because they just go down and do it all over again.<\/p>\n

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\"canvasback<\/a><\/p>\n

These birds are very protective of their feeding areas.\u00a0 At first glance this may look like a love-fest but it’s far from that.\u00a0 The male on the left is an interloper who came into the feeding area of the first bird.\u00a0 These two are pushing against each other aggressively.\u00a0 They circled in the water as they did so and it went on for quite a while…<\/p>\n

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\"canvasback<\/a><\/p>\n

but it eventually transformed into an all-out fight. (sorry about the composition, I had no more room on the right).<\/p>\n

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\"canvasback<\/a><\/p>\n

As is often the case in aggressive encounters between birds, it was the interloper who was driven off.\u00a0 Then the winning male calmly went back to feeding.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

Note: I’ve posted about some of this behavior in Canvasbacks long ago but only one of these images was used previously.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Because of its striking appearance the Canvasback is often referred to as the “aristocrat” of ducks. But as you’ll see, it’s difficult to look aristocratic with your face, head and neck slathered in mud.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,334,364,392,394],"tags":[1374,70,136,140,211],"class_list":["post-14103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bird-behaviors","category-birds","category-canvasbacks","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","tag-athya-valisineria","tag-canvasback","tag-feeding","tag-fighting","tag-male"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-3Ft","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}