Ring-neck Duck

Aythya collaris

Of all the diving duck species, the Ring-necked Duck is most likely to drop into small ponds during migration, making them a common visitor during the spring and winter here in Ridgefield. Despite their name, the ring on the neck is almost never visible. Male Ring-necked Ducks are compact ducks with a peaked, deep-black, iridescent head, breast, and rump, and light flanks in the breeding season. Overall, the Ring-necked Duck is similar in appearance to both the Greater and Lesser Scaups, but unlike the scaups, the Male Ring-necked Duck has a black back. He also has a white spur at the shoulder, a gray bill outlined with white and with a white ring near the black tip, and yellow eyes. The male in non-breeding plumage is browner on the flanks, but with a darker head, breast, and back. Its bill lacks a white outline and has a black tip. The Female Ring-necked Duck looks similar to female Greater and Lesser Scaups. She is brown overall with lighter-gray cheeks. Like the scaups, she has a white crescent at the base of her bill, although it is less distinctive than that of either the Greater or Lesser Scaup. The Female Ring-necked Duck can be distinguished from the scaups by the thin, white

eye-ring that trails back to her ear, and the peaked shape of her head, as well as by differing habitat. Juveniles look like females.

Unlike most other diving ducks, the Ring-necked Duck is a strong and fast flier, and is able to take flight by springing up directly from the water, without a laborious take-off. They forage by diving, but can usually be found in shallow water and forages and dabbles at the surface as well. Their diet is more generalized than other diving ducks. They eat mostly seeds, roots, and tubers. Aquatic invertebrates are also eaten, especially by breeding females and their young. The female tends the young, and may continue to brood them at night for some time. Unlike many divers, which bring their broods out into the open water, the female Ring-necked Duck hides her brood in the marsh. The young are capable of flight at 49 to 55 days. The female usually stays with the young until this point, but she may leave before the young have fledged.

Ringed-necked Duck pairs form during spring migration, and don’t dissolve until the female begins to incubate their eggs. Ring-necked ducks breed from May to early August, and they nest on dry hummocks close to water or on mats of floating vegetation in the water. The nest is a shallow bowl of vegetation and down. Most of the nest construction (by the female alone) is complete when incubation begins. The female typically lays 8 to 10 eggs and incubates them for 25 to 29 days. Twelve to 24 hours after the ducklings hatch, they head to the water where they feed themselves.

Did You Know? The Ring-necked Duck’s common name (and its scientific name “collaris,” too) refer to the Ring-necked Duck’s

hard-to-see chestnut collar on its black neck. It’s not a good field mark to use for identifying the bird, but it jumped out to the nineteenth-century biologists that described the species using dead specimens.

-Samantha Zeiner, FRNWR Administrative Coordinator
images by Virginia Scott & Angie Vogel