The Fuegian Steamer Duck (Tachyeres pteneres), also called the Magellanic Flightless Steamer Duck, is a flightless duck

Duck

Duck is the common name for a large number of species in the Anatidae family of birds, which also includes swans and geese. The ducks are divided among several subfamilies in the Anatidae family; they do not represent a monophyletic group but a form taxon, since swans and geese are not considered...

 from South America. It belongs to the steamer duck genus

Genus

In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

 Tachyeres. It inhabits the rocky coasts and coastal islands from southern Chile

Chile

Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...

 and Chiloé to Tierra del Fuego

Tierra del Fuego

Tierra del Fuego is an archipelago off the southernmost tip of the South American mainland, across the Strait of Magellan. The archipelago consists of a main island Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego divided between Chile and Argentina with an area of , and a group of smaller islands including Cape...

, switching to the adjacent sheltered bays and lakes further inland when breeding.

Description

It is a massively built waterfowl at 3.5 – and 65 –, with the males noticeably larger than the females. The wingspan is 85–110 cm (33.5–43.3 in). This species outweighs any other wild species called "duck", although this species is only distantly related to most true ducks (for example of the genus Anas

Anas

Anas is a genus of dabbling ducks. It includes mallards, wigeons, teals, pintails and shovelers in a number of subgenera. Some authorities prefer to elevate the subgenera to genus rank...

). On males, the head and neck is blue-gray, with paler coloration crown and forehead. He has a narrow white eye-ring which continuing backwards as stripe and a reddish-brown throat. His abdomen, ventral area and undertail coverts are white and the tail is grey. Females are a darker gray-brown on the head and dark reddish on the throat. Her body and wings as males, but she may have brown/wine colouring on feathers. The juvenile is similar to the female but slightly duller colored.

Life History

This species either nests near water obscured in dense, shrubby vegetation or in abandoned penguin nest burrows in September through December. 4-11 eggs are laid, with an average clutch of 9. The ivory eggs measure 8.2 by 5.6 cm (3.2 by 2.2 in) and weigh around 167 g (5.9 oz). Incubation occurs for 28 to 40 days. The young fledge at 120-130 days and are driven from the parent's terrority by their parents and form flocks with other ousted immature steamerducks. They become sexual mature at 2 to 3 years of age. Adult males are known to be extremely aggressive during mating season, including towards other waterfowl, but may join mixed-species winter flocks without incident.

There are several potential predators of eggs and young birds: fox

Fox

Fox is a common name for many species of omnivorous mammals belonging to the Canidae family. Foxes are small to medium-sized canids , characterized by possessing a long narrow snout, and a bushy tail .Members of about 37 species are referred to as foxes, of which only 12 species actually belong to...

es, caracara

Caracara

Caracaras are birds of prey in the family Falconidae. They are traditionally placed in the subfamily Polyborinae, but are sometimes considered part of their own subfamily, Caracarinae, or members of the true falcon subfamily, Falconinae...

s, gull

Gull

Gulls are birds in the family Laridae. They are most closely related to the terns and only distantly related to auks, skimmers, and more distantly to the waders...

s, skua

Skua

The skuas are a group of seabirds with about seven species forming the family Stercorariidae and the genus Stercorarius. The three smaller skuas are called jaegers in North America....

s and giant petrel

Giant petrel

Giant petrels is a genus, Macronectes, from the family Procellariidae and consist of two species. They are the largest birds from this family...

s. Healthy adults may have no natural predators. This species lives principally off of saltwater molluscs, crustacean

Crustacean

Crustaceans form a very large group of arthropods, usually treated as a subphylum, which includes such familiar animals as crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimp, krill and barnacles. The 50,000 described species range in size from Stygotantulus stocki at , to the Japanese spider crab with a leg span...

s and small fish

Fish

Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...

. During the breeding season, they tend to eat and feed their young small snail

Snail

Snail is a common name applied to most of the members of the molluscan class Gastropoda that have coiled shells in the adult stage. When the word is used in its most general sense, it includes sea snails, land snails and freshwater snails. The word snail without any qualifier is however more often...

s, insect

Insect

Insects are a class of living creatures within the arthropods that have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body , three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes, and two antennae...

 larvae, amphipods and isopods/

This species is locally infamous for the aggressive disposition of adult males. Incidents have allegedly occurred where a raging male was placed by a misguided collector among adults of various other waterfowl

Waterfowl

Waterfowl are certain wildfowl of the order Anseriformes, especially members of the family Anatidae, which includes ducks, geese, and swans....

species and killed all the other birds with their powerful, spurred wings.