Ducks are omnivorous birds which means they will eat a mixture of both plants and animals. They tend to be opportunistic feeders so a duck’s diet will also depend on the habitat they live in, and the food available to them, including food that is meant for human consumption.
Many ducks also vary their diet over the year with some species eating more animal matter during breeding season and spring migration, and more plant matter during the winter and autumn migration. For example, Mandarin ducks eat mostly insects, snails, small fish, and aquatic plants in spring, worms, fish, frogs, molluscs, and small snakes in summer, and acorns and grains in autumn and winter.
Species of ducks can broadly be divided into two categories: dabbling ducks and diving ducks.
As the name suggests, diving ducks feed mainly by diving deep below the surface of water to catch fish, chase insects, or to pull up aquatic plants. Dabbling ducks tend to live in shallow water and feed by dipping their heads underwater to scoop up vegetation and insects. They also graze on land for seeds and grain.
Ducks are great swimmers and nearly always live near water, both freshwater and seawater. Aquatic plants, therefore, make up a large part of their diet throughout the year.
Some ducks, such as gadwalls and wigeons prefer the leafy parts of aquatic vegetation including grasses, sedges, pondweed, and rushes, others such as mallards, pintails, and teals prefer the seeds of wetland plants, while scaups and pochards eat roots and tubers.
In winter many ducks, such as mallards, wigeons, and pintails eat agricultural crops including rice, wheat, corn, and barley. Ducks also eat berries, buds, seeds, and flowers, and wood ducks are known to eat acorns.
Both dabbling ducks and diving ducks eat invertebrates. Dabbling ducks tend to eat more terrestrial species and diving ducks prefer aquatic species.
The American wigeon, a dabbling duck, for example eats midges, horseflies, and beetles, while the lesser scaup, a diving duck, eats clams, snails, crustaceans, and aquatic insects.
Some species of duck, such as the eider, swallow mussels whole. The shells are then ground up in their gizzards and excreted. Eiders also eat crabs, removing their claws and legs before eating the body in one piece.
In Asia, farmers have taken advantage of ducks preying on pests by introducing a system called rice-duck farming. Ducks and rice are raised together in paddy fields with the ducks eating harmful insects and weeds which eliminates the need for artificial pesticides.
Most diving ducks, including scoters and goldeneyes eat fish, but this tends to make up just a small portion of their diet.
The only species that eat a significant number of fish are the mergansers, also known as the sawbills or fish ducks, who have specialised bills with serrations that have adapted for catching their prey. They eat a wide variety of fish, including salmon, trout, sticklebacks, minnows, and eels.
Many species of ducks eat fish eggs or roe. In 2020, a team of scientists found that carp eggs that were fed to mallards, passed through the ducks’ guts and successfully hatched. It is not yet known whether any eggs survive this way in the wild.
Many ducks will eat frogspawn and tadpoles including tufted ducks and pochards. They will also eat froglets and toadlets, although for most species adult amphibians are too large to consume comfortably.
Greater scaups, which eat mainly molluscs, aquatic plants, and aquatic insects, have been observed eating hibernating leopard frogs which they dredged out of a freshwater pond by the side of a road, and which measure about 5 cm in length.
As we have seen, ducks will eat almost anything, and lizards, salamanders, and other small reptiles are no exception.
They will also eat small snakes such as copperheads, corn snakes, and garter snakes. Muscovy ducks, in particular, are well known for eating snakes and will sometimes injure snakes when trying to protect their eggs.
In 2016, a female Muscovy duck attacked a 1.9 m carpet python after seeing her mate eaten by the reptile. The python was taken to Australia Zoo’s Wildlife Hospital where it was treated for deep lacerations.
One Response
Thank you for the article. I hadn’t known about the dabbling/diving divide. Interesting!