What You Need to Know About Ruddy Ducks

On March 11, 1998, I received a call through the hotline about a downed duck in Alexandria. I spoke with a nice lady who said she had found a duck in her driveway, and it could not walk - it just sat there, and later scuffled along onto the grassy area and waited to be rescued. It was late in the evening, so I asked her to transport it to an emergency clinic not far away. Early the next morning, I spoke with the vet who had examined the bird. She didn't know what kind of duck it was, and she could find nothing physically wrong with it, except that it would not stand up.

Later that morning, I went to pick the bird up for "rehabilitation". When I got it home, I looked through my bird books and identified it as a female or immature Ruddy duck. Since it appeared fine except for the walking thing, I took it over to Dr. Rieman at Great Falls Animal Hospital for an evaluation. Dr. Rieman took one look at the bird and said: "That is a Ruddy duck. These ducks can never walk on land." He got out his Peterson guide, and there it was in plain writing - Ruddy ducks cannot walk; they must be in water to survive. That is the only guide I had not consulted. I have found one other book called Waterbirds of the Northeast that mentions this.

When I got home with the duck, I consulted a book on migration and discovered that another important fact about Ruddy ducks is that they migrate at night, that we are on the migration route, and that they were migrating at that time. I figured that the bird had possibly hit a building while on its migration flight the night it was found downed. Also, birds will often mistake a black-topped surface for water. The next morning I took the duck to a large pond down near the Potomac River, and it swam happily about for the day. According to the natural history of Ruddy ducks, they spend the daylight hours during their migration swimming and feeding on water, and they continue their migration after sunset. On the following morning I checked the pond, and it had gone on its way.

I have read through alot of books now on waterfowl. There are many waterfowl that cannot walk well on land , but Ruddy ducks and loons are the only ones that I can discover that cannot walk at all.