#aythyinae

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Ejder (Somateria mollissima) | Svenska fåglar efter naturen och på sten ritade | Bröderna von Wright | rawpixel

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Lucky ducks: Once thought extinct, rare pochards take steps toward recovery

One of the world’s rarest birds, once thought to be extinct, successfully bred in the wild late last year. The crop of ducklings marks a victory for conservation groups that have been working for more than a decade to save the species.

In November, conservationists celebrated the appearance of 12 Madagascar pochard (Aythya innotata) ducklings on Lake Sofia in northern Madagascar. They had introduced a set of young adult pochards there in December 2018 but did not expect them to reproduce so quickly. Diving ducks normally don’t breed until they are 2 years old.

“We were very surprised and excited to have chicks just one year after introducing the ducks,” Felix Razafindrajao, a wetlands manager for Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, a group based on Jersey in the British Isles, told Mongabay. In addition to the 12 ducklings, which came in two broods, there are also eight pochard eggs in the marshes that should hatch in the next few weeks, he said.

The pochard was once common in Madagascar’s highlands, but the population declined rapidly in the mid-20th century. Besides one male found in 1991, there were no confirmed sightings between 1970 and 2006, when a scientist from U.S conservation group the Peregrine Fund happened to spot a few of the ducks in a volcanic lake in northern Madagascar.

Decades-long efforts to find the duck through surveys and public campaigns had, it turned out, been too geographically restricted. The search had focused on the center of the high plateau, and especially the Lake Alaotra region, where the pochard, known locally as fotsimaso (“white eyes”), was once common. But the duck was in the far fringes of the high plateau.

“Everybody was looking for the duck in the high plateau but they forgot about the high plateau in the northwest,” Richard Lewis, Durrell’s country director, told Mongabay.

The rediscovered pochards were in fact living in a mile-high lake, surrounded by what Lewis called a “fabulous bit of forest up in the middle of nowhere,” where there was little deforestation or rice cultivation. The Bemanevika site, some 32 to 40 kilometers (20 to 25 miles) northwest of the town of Bealanana, is now a protected area, having received that status partly because of the pochard’s presence. The site includes four shallow lakes, but the pochards usually stay on the one where they were found and breed in its papyrus marshes.

After 2006, scientists determined that Bemanevika was not an ideal place for the pochard population to grow because of the topography of the lake the pochards kept to and the extremely high death rate of ducklings. “This appears to be an example of a Critically Endangered species whose last refuge is in habitat that is not ideal, but is undisturbed,” wrote the authors of a 2015 study in Bird Conservation International.

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This tufted duck, the first ever sighted in Australia, was spotted at Werribee treatment plant near Melbourne

Photograph: Melbourne Water

(via The week in wildlife – in pictures | Environment | The Guardian)

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Lesser Scaup Airborne (via USFWS Mountain-Prairie)

After its running-on-water takeoff, this lesser scaup raises its landing gear and flaps to gain altitude over the wetland it has flushed from. Lesser scaup have been quite common to see in the Kulm Wetland Management District of North Dakota this spring.

Photo Credit: Krista Lundgren/USFWS

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Rare birds ‘at risk of poisoning from eating lead shot’ | The Guardian

Several rare bird species, including a breed of red-headed duck listed as “vulnerable”, are under threat from lead poisoning linked to shooting, a new report says.

Numbers of common pochard, a duck species at risk of global extinction, have fallen substantially over the past 30 years, a decline partly attributed to the fact that they eat some of the 5,000 tonnes of lead pellets discarded in the countryside by people shooting game, according to the Lead Ammunition Group (LAG).

Other species affected by lead poisoning include the grey partridge, which is also on the RSPB’s “red list” of threatened species, as well as the golden eagle, common buzzard and red kite, the LAG says.

The warning comes in a major new report by the LAG, an expert panel set up by the government in 2010, which says up to 400,000 wildfowl a year may suffer from lead poisoning, causing up to 100,000 deaths. Recent research cited in the report shows that lead can be toxic at lower levels than previously thought.

More than 600,000 people go shooting in the UK each year, part of an industry worth about £2bn. They typically use lead shot to hunt birds, a practice known as wildfowling. The shot scatters when it leaves the gun barrel, and a large proportion falls to the ground. Birds eat the lead shot, mistaking it for the gravel their gizzards need to digest food.

The report says new research shows that birds wounded by lead shot also suffer lead poisoning. By using steel shot instead, shooting-related industries could save up to £16m a year, research indicates.

“Replacing all leaded ammunition, certainly for live quarry shooting, would be more effective, cheaper and more straightforward,” said John Swift, the LAG chairman, who added that Forest Enterprise Scotland had already started to use lead-free ammunition for culling the rapidly growing population of red deer.

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Ring-necked Ducks at Manasquan Reservoir (by me)

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Ring-necked Duck (by me): This photo shows a bit of the chestnut ring on its neck that gives the bird its name.

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Madagascar pochard, world's rarest bird, needs new home

The Madagascar pochard, the world's rarest bird, will not be able to thrive without a new wetland home. This is according to a study revealing that 96% of the chicks are dying at two to three weeks old. Conservationists say that human activity has driven the birds to one remaining wetland, but that that site has insufficient food for the ducks. The research is published in the journal Bird Conservation International....

Human activity, including deforestation, farming and fishing, has destroyed their habitat to the point that this last population is now restricted to one wetland in north-east Madagascar - a complex of lakes near Bemanevika.

After the rediscovery of the species at this site in 2006, the WWT and its partners, including the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and the Peregrine Fund, set up a conservation breeding programme and began to monitor the wild birds.

Dr Geoff Hilton, head of species research at the WWT, said that with such a small number of birds, keeping a close eye on the population was straightforward. "We had about 10 or 11 females, [and] we were able to tell that most of those females were laying eggs, and those eggs were hatching," he told BBC News. But at the point when the ducklings were two to three weeks old, they would start disappearing.

Piecing the evidence together, including samples of food from the bottom of the lake, the researchers realised that the chicks were starving to death. These diving ducks feed from the bottom of lakes, and this steep crater lake was simply too deep for them.

(via BBC News)