SuperParrot Blog July 2024

This month, I met three brilliant birds – the White-faced Whistling Ducks!

Their names are Cherry, Willow and Teak.

As the name suggests, these lovely birds have a white face with a black nape. The rest of their body is a mix of browns which makes their head stand out! When they are still juvenile (that means not fully grown), they don’t have their distinctive white face – as you can see from the picture below!

Their Latin name is Dendrocygna viduata (den-dro-sig-na vid-u-a-ta). They are very social (which means they like company) and live in big flocks in the wild. They are found in Tropical America and sub-Saharan Africa and even though they are also known as ‘White-faced Tree Ducks,’ they don’t spend a lot of time in trees! They prefer to live in places with water like lakes, lagoons, marshes, rivers, reservoirs and flood plains which is great because they are fantastic swimmers!

White-faced Whistling Ducks have webbed feet which means that they have skin connecting their toes together. This is really useful as it means they can push more water back with their webbed feet and it helps them swim, a bit like using a paddle for humans when they are canoeing or kayaking!

White-faced Whistling Ducks belong to the family of birds Anatidae which includes ducks, geese and swans. They have the word ‘whistling’ in their common name because they make a high-pitched whistling sound to call to each other. They whistle to call to each other so they know where they are – fantastic! Turn up the volume and have a listen to the video below.

They eat mainly at night in the wild but can also be found to eat during the day too, enjoying grasses, seeds, rice, pondweed and molluscs, crustaceans and insects!

Because they live in such a huge area and the population is large, according to Bird Life International (an organisation that helps humans to know how endangered a bird is in the wild), they are considered, ‘Least Concern’ which is brilliant because they are really interesting birds!

Here is video of the three of them having lunch… at speed!