A Wood Duck drake in full color reads more like a costume than a wild bird: an iridescent green-and-purple crest, a red eye, and a body patterned in chestnut, buff, and white in combinations no other North American duck attempts. The female is quieter but distinctive too, marked by a white teardrop around the eye that stands out even in poor light.
The nest sits nowhere near what most people picture for a duck. Wood Ducks nest in tree cavities, sometimes well up a trunk and often far from open water, and the ducklings make their first move in life a leap: jumping from the nest hole to the ground or water below within a day of hatching, bouncing largely unhurt thanks to how little they weigh at that age.
Tree cavities nearly cost the species everything, too. Habitat loss and unregulated hunting pushed Wood Duck numbers into serious decline by the early 1900s, and recovery took decades of hunting limits paired with a simple, effective fix: nest boxes, installed by the thousands across wetlands where old, cavity-riddled trees had become scarce.
Like this? Get one bird every morning, by email.
You're in. Your first bird arrives with the next morning email (5:30am ET) — and your life list now syncs.Your account →
How to identify
- Widely considered the most colorful North American duck: males show an iridescent green-and-purple crested head, red eyes, and boldly patterned chestnut, buff, and white plumage.
- Females are subtler gray-brown with a distinctive white teardrop eye-patch.
- Nests in tree cavities, sometimes far from water: ducklings jump from the nest hole to the ground or water within a day of hatching.
- Flies fast and agile through wooded swamps, unusual among ducks for maneuvering easily between trees.
Voice
A rising, squealing whistle from females (often rendered oo-eek), especially in alarmed flushing flight; males give a soft, thin whistle.
At a glance
- Family
- Anatidae (ducks, geese & swans)
- Range
- Eastern and western U.S. and southern Canada; some populations winter into Mexico
- Habitat
- Wooded swamps, beaver ponds, and slow rivers with overhanging trees
- Diet
- Seeds, acorns, aquatic plants, and insects
Where it lives
How big is it?
How is it doing?
Field notes
- Ducklings leap from the nest cavity (sometimes 15 meters or more up a tree) within 24 hours of hatching, bouncing off the ground largely unharmed thanks to how little they weigh relative to their size, which keeps the impact force low.
- Wood Ducks were hunted and had so much wetland habitat drained that the species was feared headed for extinction by the early 1900s; hunting restrictions and, later, thousands of nest boxes helped the population rebound dramatically.
- Nest boxes work partly because Wood Ducks naturally compete for scarce tree cavities — so scarce that females sometimes lay eggs in another female's nest, a behavior called egg dumping that can leave a single nest with more than 20 eggs from multiple hens.
Go deeper
The daily email
Get tomorrow's bird in your inbox
One bird at 5:30am ET, every day. Free, no password, one-click unsubscribe — and your life list syncs across devices.
You're in. Your first bird arrives with the next morning email (5:30am ET) — and your life list now syncs.Your account →