Guardian Nature School Team Contact Blog Project Noah Facebook Project Noah Twitter

A worldwide community photographing and learning about wildlife

Join Project Noah!
nature school apple icon

Project Noah Nature School visit nature school

Knob-billed/Comb Duck

Sarkidiornis melanotos

Description:

It is one of the largest species of duck. Length can range from 56 to 76 cm (22 to 30 in), wingspan ranges from 116 to 145 cm (46 to 57 in) and weight from 1.03 to 2.9 kg (2.3 to 6.4 lb). Adults have a white head freckled with dark spots, and a pure white neck and underparts. The upperparts are glossy blue-black upperparts, with bluish and greenish iridescence especially prominent on the secondaries (lower arm feathers). The male is much larger than the female, and has a large black knob on the bill. Young birds are dull buff below and on the face and neck, with dull brown upperparts, top of the head and eyestripe.

Habitat:

An unusual, pan-tropical duck, found in tropical wetlands in sub-Saharan Africa, Madagascar and south Asia from Pakistan to Laos and extreme southern China. It also occurs in continental South America south to the Paraguay River region in eastern Paraguay, southeastern Brazil and the extreme northeast of Argentina, and as a vagrant on Trinidad.

Notes:

It could be a female or a young one because the knob on its nose is not too big. It lives in the zoo of Planckendael.

Species ID Suggestions



Sign in to suggest organism ID

1 Comment

rutasandinas
rutasandinas 12 years ago

Fantásticas series

The MnMs
Spotted by
The MnMs

Mechelen, Vlaanderen, Belgium

Spotted on Mar 11, 2012
Submitted on Apr 2, 2012

Related Spottings

Comb Duck (Female) Comb Duck Comb Duck Comb Duck

Nearby Spottings

Alpaca adult Black-necked Swan White-faced Whistling Duck Domesticated turkey

Reference

Noah Guardians
Noah Sponsors
join Project Noah Team

Join the Project Noah Team