A colorful duck that perches in trees and nests in tree cavities near water.
Breeding males have glossy green and chestnut feathers with bold white patterns. Adult females are gray-brown with a white mark around the eye.
A wood duck duckling uses its tail feathers as a brace while climbing. Film of newly hatched birds showed a series of upward leaps rather than alternating steps. The claws gripped the surface while the tail pressed against it. As the feet reached upward for another hold, contact with the tail helped support the body against falling backward.
A 1974 paper reported filming climbing movements at 64 frames per second and tracing successive frames. A vertical fine-wire-gauze surface was used for filming. Long, stiffened shafts in the tail down braced the lifting movement. In separate tests, incubator-hatched ducklings spent 24 hours in a darkened carton before being placed individually in a chimney-like apparatus lit from above. They jumped upward and clung to the wall while trying to emerge.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
Wood ducks sometimes lay eggs in another female’s nest box. In a 1992 study near Lake Shelbyville, Illinois, 21 of 39 analysed nests showed this behaviour. Among nests producing at least one hatchling, the proportion of eggs yielding ducklings that left the nest was 73% in parasitized nests and 91% in unparasitized nests. Alongside box occupancy, following outcomes from egg laying to nest departure contributes to local conservation management of nest-box programmes.