Specie's Page                                               Hawaiian Islands - Laysan Duck

Laysan Duck:   UK Status: Non resident, though found at wildlife parks, zoos and in rare bird breeding centres. This duck is endemic to the Hawaiian Islands, and once thrived across the whole of the archipelago. Now they only survive on Laysan Island, and two other atolls.

Habitat: This bird prefers the Hawaiian range of atolls, and is a ground feeder. They are not good flyers, and usually freeze when in danger, hiding in thick vegetation.

Breeding: Breeding pairs start to meet up together in late autumn, and start to make their nests in spring. Nests are constructed in hollows on the ground, and are lined with grasses. Clutches of about three to seven dull off white eggs are laid. When the chicks hatch they start to feed for themselves after only two days. The mother however guards them for forty to sixty days, keeping a close watch, and guides them to suitable feeding areas.

Comment: Guano collectors introduced rabbits and rats during the early eighteen hundreds, and by eighteen sixty the duck was almost extinct. The twelve remaining pairs were transferred to the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge. Here they have bred very successfully, and been re-introduced to other atolls.