Thursday 8 December 2011: Scaup family keeping close to mum
Female scaup with 5 ducklings. I've never seen a scaup with so many ducklings, so I hope she manages to raise them all.
Scaup are a native New Zealand diving duck - females are brown with brown eyes, males are much darker with a bright yellow eye. They are still reasonably common, preferring large areas of clean water. they were breeding on the Avon, but the pollution from the quake has cut their numbers and I've seen no ducklings so far this year.
The young ones are very cute when they dive as you can see them swimming along under water if it's clear and then they pop up like a cork out of a bottle.
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