Young Ruddy's

I found a family of 7 Ruddy's at Sweetwater (Tucson, AZ) but they were hard to approach. For about an hour I played this cat and mouse game with them trying to sneak into a good camera position but it just never worked out. However it was very entertaining to watch the young ones follow Mom around the pond.

I was wondering if someone could give me an idea as to how old you think these young Ruddy's are? One to three months or older?

Thanks,
Jim

Jim, these ducklings are Class 1B or 8-13 days of age from the best I can tell. They do not have any feathers that I can see (just down) and their down color has faded, and that would up them in the 1B class. Once feathers start replacing the down on the sides and tail then they will be in the Clase IIA or 19-27 days of age range.

I'd agree with Ron, but put them closer to the 8 day line; it's all down, and the wing length is less than a quarter of the body length.

Very interesting, I had no idea that they would be that young. I would of thought that the end of October is a strange time to have ducklings or do ducks have ducklings any time of the year?
Thanks,
Jim

The Arizona Breeding Bird Atlas shows confirmed breeding from April 1 through the end of September, but this may be an artifact of the survey period that typically ended in mid August.

The end of Oct is late, but like in FL ducks breeding in the hot climate of AZ don't have to worry too much about really cold and wet weather interfering with brood survival, so a few breed very late. We have very young Black-bellied whistling ducks still paddling around here in EC FL.

Thanks for all the comments, good stuff to know.
Jim

I sent the link to this post to Troy Corman who ran the AZ Breeding Bird effort and edited the Atlas. Troy replied:

it appears there were several late broods of Ruddy Ducks in southeastern AZ this fall. I received several reports (and photos) from Sweetwater and one from the wastewater ponds in Sierra Vista in the past few weeks.

All very interesting!

Sandy