Ferruginous Duck

Aythya nyroca

Other Pics: Female Ferruginous Duck

Other Names

  White-eyed Pochard, Ferruginous Pochard, Ferruginous White-eye, Common White-eye   Fuligule nyroca   Moorente   Porrón Pardo   Vitögd dykand   Witoogeend   Moretta tabaccata

World: Fragmented distribution from western Europe through to western Mongolia and with isolated populations from Libya through to NE Pakistan. Overwinters around the Mediterranean basin, sub-Saharan Africa, Caspian Sea, Middle East and the Indian sub-continent.

Kenya: Rare straggler south of its range into Kenya.

Diet consists mainly of seeds, roots and green parts of aquatic plants, but, like other Pochards, it also takes aquatic invertebrates. It may be a more common visitor to Kenya than thought due to the fact that it is found mixed in with flocks of the, very similar, Southern Pochard. However it is still likely that its occurrence is rare. The Ferruginous Duck and the Southern Pochard can be told apart by the eye colour (white in the former and red in the latter species) and by the lack of any white markings on the body of the Southern Pochard.