Fun Facts about Canvasbacks
- Often called the aristocrat of ducks, the Canvasback holds its long sloping forehead high with a distinguished look. Males stand out with a rusty head and neck and a gleaming whitish body bookended in black. Females are pale brown overall, but that Canvasback head shape still gives them away. This diving duck eats plant tubers at the bottom of lakes and wetlands. It breeds in lakes and marshes and winters by the thousands on freshwater lakes and coastal waters.
- Canvasbacks breed in small lakes, deep-water marshes, bays, and ponds. They tend toward waters with a dense border of cattails, rushes, and reed grass, but in the boreal forest they use open marshes. During migration and on the wintering grounds, Canvasbacks use marine and freshwater areas including estuaries, lagoons, rivers, ponds, marshes, lakes, and occasionally flooded agricultural fields.
- Canvasbacks are omnivores, eating everything from seeds to plant tubers and from mussels to insects. During the breeding season they eat both plant and animal foods, but during migration and winter they primarily eat rhizomes and tubers from aquatic plants. Canvasbacks dive straight down to depths of around 7 feet to extract pieces of aquatic plants with their bill. Other food is taken from or just below the surface of the water.
- Canvasbacks are diving ducks at home in the water, seldom going ashore to dry land. They sleep on the water with their bill tucked under the wing, and they nest on floating mats of vegetation. To get airborne Canvasbacks need a running start, but once in the air they are strong and fast fliers, clocking airspeeds of up to 56 miles per hour. Canvasbacks are social outside of the breeding season; they gather in large rafts by the thousands to tens of thousands. Only when winter food is scarce or clumped do they defend foraging areas against other Canvasbacks.
- The oldest recorded Canvasback was a male, and at least 22 years, 7 months old when he was shot in California in 1991. He had been banded in the same state in 196