Lake Duck

Argentine rowing ducks in Heidelberg Zoo

The Argentine duck (Oxyura vittata ), also known as the Argentine ruddy duck ruddy duck or binding, is a breeds of ducks of the subfamily of the rudder ducks.

Features

Argentine rowing ducks reach a body length of about 35 to 40 centimeters and a weight of about 640 grams. Females and males in plumage are sooty - brown to blackish with yellow brown to reddish shaft drawing. Under the eye extends from the base of the dark gray beak to the neck, a yellow -brown to whitish stripes, under which a slightly mottled dark band is. The neck is whitish, often with dark mottled or speckled neck. The belly is silvery- white with brown spots, legs and feet are dark gray.

In breeding plumage, the male has a completely black colored head. The body is reddish - maroon, the flight feathers of the tail and the region between the shoulders are sooty - brown to blackish. The belly is speckled off- white, with the maroon stain back sometimes clearly goes into the belly coloration. The beak is bright blue colored, the iris of the eye is reddish brown. Legs and feet are blue-gray.

While most birds have no external reproductive organ, the males of the Argentine ruddy duck have an exceptionally large penis, which rolled up like a corkscrew at rest lies in the cloaca and reached an average length of about 20 centimeters. For a copy in a fully extended state even 42.5 centimeters were measured. The tortuous even when extended penis is spotty gray and carries on the basis of a number of coarse spines, while the end is soft and brush-like. How exactly the organ during mating is used, is unknown. It has been speculated that it fulfills a function or acting as rudder ducks exhibit pronounced promiscuity, for the removal of landfilled sperm used in previous matings in the female genital tract.

Occurrence

The Argentine ruddy duck inhabited ponds and lakes with rich water vegetation in the plains of temperate South America. It breeds in Chile from the Atacama Desert to Tierra del Fuego, in Argentina, and wintered in Paraguay, Uruguay and southern Brazil.

Swell

• Emmet Reid Blake: Manual of Neotropical Birds: Spheniscidae ( Penguins ) to Laridae ( Gulls and Allies ). University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1977, ISBN 978-0-226-05641-8, p 257