Males: Have a crested head with a white stripe from the eye to the crest and another from the bill to the crest tip, an apricot throat and chest, and an apricot-white belly. Their bill is brightly patterned black, white, and red, and their legs and feet are dull straw-yellow.
Females: Have an apricot head and neck with a light apricot crest, a white teardrop-shaped patch around the eye, a white throat, and an apricot breast with white stippling that fades into an apricot-white belly. Their bill is blue-gray, and their legs and feet are dull grayish-yellow.
Eclipse Plumage: Like other wood ducks, male apricot wood ducks lose their colorful breeding plumage in late summer, transitioning to a more subdued gray or grayish-brown appearance with white facial markings and some blue feathers on their wings, a state known as eclipse plumage.
Unique Shape: Wood ducks, including apricot varieties, have a unique silhouette with a boxy, crested head, a thin neck, and a long, broad tail.
Behavior and Habitat:
Perching Ducks: Unlike most ducks, wood ducks have strong claws that allow them to perch on branches and live partly in trees.
Cavity Nesters: They nest in holes in trees or in nest boxes placed around lake margins.
Diet: They eat a varied diet of seeds, aquatic plants, nuts, fruits, shrubs, aquatic and land insects, and even the odd frog.
Social Behavior: Wood ducks are social and often gather in flocks in the evening, and they migrate in small flocks or pairs.
Calls: Males have a thin, high, rising "jeeeeee" call, while females utter a drawn-out, rising squeal, "oo-eek" when flushed, and a sharp "cr-r-ek, cr-e-ek" for an alarm call
7498 N 190th St, Waverly, NE 68462, United State
