Canvasback

Aythya valisineria

With its large size, and distinguished sloping forehead, the Canvasback has been nicknamed the “King of Ducks”. It seems to wear this name proudly as it swims with its forehead high.

Habitat

Look for Canvasbacks in summer across the prairies and parts of the western boreal forest up into the Northwest Territories, Yukon, and Alaska. You’ll find them on small lakes, bays, ponds, and marshes with deeper water. They especially favour water with a thick border of cattails or rushes.  Winter takes them to coastal areas and estuaries, lagoons, rivers, ponds, and lakes, in the southern United States and Mexico.

You can find Canvasbacks at Oak Hammock Marsh!

Food

Canvasbacks eat both animals and plants: mussels and insects, but also seeds, tubers, and roots.

Behaviour

Elaborate courtship rituals involving head bobs and neck stretches occur during migration and early spring in the north. After mating, the female will build a floating nest of plant parts. They anchor it to cattails or other standing plants. Anywhere from 5 to 11 eggs are laid and incubated for about 25 days. Sometimes a female may even lay her eggs in another’s nest! Once hatched, the young can swim and will leave the nest soon after. Canvasbacks are excellent divers, with setback legs. However, they must run on the water to fly and are poor walkers, rarely coming on land.

Conservation

Since the 1950s, Canvasback numbers have varied. By the 1980s they were listed as a species of concern, but their numbers increased through the 1990s and today they are a species of low concern.  These fluctuations may be the result of nesting success in wet years and failure in dry years, changes in hunting limits over the past decades, loss of foods due to pollution, and habitat loss due to wetland drainage.

back