The White-Winged Duck’s Last Call
- Laasya Shekhar లాస్య శేఖర్
- 22 minutes ago
- 6 min read
This story is produced by The Xylom and co-published by Scroll.in, India’s leading digital news organization.
Ignoring the doves and passerines sharing the habitat, the duck, amused to see a potential mate, bobs his head and lets out a series of shrill cries — resembling the honk of an ice-cream truck.
The female moves away just enough to signal indifference, but not rejection. That hint of interest is enough for him to continue the courtship ritual. Soon, she responds with head-bobbing and calls of her own.
These are not ordinary ducks. The elusive white-winged duck (Asarcornis scutulata) is the state bird of the northeastern Indian state of Assam. Originating from the forested swamps of South and Southeast Asia, with a historic range as far as Bhutan and parts of Indonesia, they only reveal their large wingspan — up to 153 cm (5 feet) — and white underwings when in flight. Typically calm during the day, their calls echo through forests at dusk, earning them the name deo hans — Assamese for “spirit ducks”.
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“We don’t know their feeding and mating patterns and the ducklings’ survival rates [in the wild],” says Aftab Ahmed, a biologist at the Wildlife Trust of India (WTI), a non-profit wildlife conservation organisation. “We don’t know much about their basic ecology, and most information is anecdotal. It is challenging to do systematic studies as they are very difficult to locate and track.”
What little we do know about white-winged ducks reveals that they are intensely territorial. “But as a pair, they are often tight and very strong,” says Harriet Whitford, the curator of birds at the Jersey Zoo in the Channel Islands. “It’s not that easy to break them up. They take time to grieve and move on if one of them dies.”
This particular pair of lovers we see, honking, nodding, and dancing between streams and ponds, however, are in fact residents of the Branféré Animal and Botanical Park in western France. What began as a courtship in November bore fruit in March, when she laid two eggs.
Such intimate and almost theatrical sights are rare to savour in the wild because white-winged ducks are now on the critically endangered list of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Their numbers have plummeted this century, with only 150–450 mature individuals remaining.
“[White-winged ducks] are habitat-specific species that flourish in water pools inside forested areas. They nest only in old trees with hollows,” explains Ahmed. As old trees are the first ones to meet the axe, these nonmigratory ducks have lost their nesting grounds. They are further threatened by human disturbances — fishing, draining of bodies of water, and pesticide pollution, to name a few.
White-winged ducks risk disappearing before their story is ever fully told. Conservation experts warn that their extinction will have a profound impact on biodiversity.
“Resident ducks have more value in ecology than migratory species [as] they feed on molluscs and control vector-borne diseases,” says Rathin Barman, director of the WTI. “By conserving the duck species, you are also saving their habitats, the lowland tropical forests.”
All Hopes on Conservation Breeding
At Branféré, once the eggs hatch, the chicks will be raised within the same park. Efforts to conserve these ducks span over five decades. In the 1970s, the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust in Slimbridge sourced ducks from eastern Assam for captive breeding, and their progeny were later distributed to zoos worldwide.
A conservation breeding programme raises a viable population in a safe environment, to be released later into the species’ natural habitat to reinforce the declining wild population. It proved successful for many species, including the crested ibis of eastern Asia. Presumed extinct in the 1960s, the bird was rediscovered in 1981 when the world population stood at just seven. The successful breeding programme resulted in the reintroduction of this rare bird to its historical range, per the results of a study. As of 2014, there were more than 1,000 captive-bred individuals across 12 conservation breeding centres or zoos in China, Japan, and Korea.
“Release of captive-bred birds should only be done in areas where there are no existing individuals. It is hoped that at some point, released and native birds will meet, but this should happen naturally after the released birds have acclimatised and established,” says Glyn Young, who chairs the IUCN Threatened Waterfowl Specialist Group.
Much of this work today is sustained by institutions that operate far from the species’ natural range. “In modern zoos, it is quite easy to support in situ projects because it's one of our goals. In Europe, in zoos, with the money that we gain from the visitors, we give some of it to protect the animals in the wild,” says Alexandre Petry, the zoological & scientific director at Branféré. He is also the European Endangered Species Programme (EEP) coordinator who oversees the conservation breeding of white-winged ducks across participating zoos in Europe.
Despite such cross-border efforts, the ducks are not released back into their range for ecological and economic reasons. Moving birds back to their country of origin is costly, time-consuming, and often involves extensive legal paperwork. The ducks in Europe have limited genetic diversity, have spent many years acclimatising to captivity, and would need to be screened very carefully for diseases or illnesses. "When you move birds back in range, you have to be incredibly careful that you are not bringing back something potentially dangerous to the in-range birds,” notes Harriet Whitford.
However, the captive population can be useful in other ways. “One idea [that we are mulling over] would be to collect the eggs from the wild in the range countries and let the female duck [from Branféré] raise them in captivity so that the ducklings are close to their natural species,” Petry opines.
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The ducks’ adaptability in captivity can be taken to advantage. Whitford notes that captive females can still perform natural behaviours such as incubating eggs, without the stress that a wild-caught female might experience in a captive setting.
“European birds could be moved to captive facilities to rear offspring that could be released into the wild, either from eggs taken from the wild or from captive European birds paired with partners carrying wild genes. These partners could either be wild-caught adults or birds captively reared from eggs taken from the wild. The resulting offspring would be better suited for release into the wild,” she says.
The Money Problem
With the highest number of white-winged ducks in their natural habitat, India holds a vital chance to secure the species’ future. Yet, there are no conservation breeding programmes.
Through awareness programmes, surveys, and collaborations with the Assam government, WTI has been working since 2019 on reviving the ducks. “Sometimes, some donors want to see the species in the wild to get convinced about funding the project. But that is difficult because they are extremely rare and cryptic in nature,” says Aftab Ahmed.
When they started in 2019, WTI received funds from corporate donors and global conservation organisations, but over the years, many backed out. “Conservation breeding takes at least 10–15 years to show the results. It requires big recurring funds and more time. A few batches could turn out unsuccessful in the beginning. Finding donors who are willing to take that risk and support for a long time is always difficult,” Ahmed says.
While their European counterparts have no funding difficulties, it is an uphill battle for Indian conservationists to secure funds, especially for lesser-known species such as white-winged ducks. “Maybe it's more difficult to collect money for duck species than for monkey species or big cats, or a more popular bird species. But because this species is very threatened, we succeed to have some money,” says Petry.
“Targeted fundraising will work. It is true that rhinos and tigers will receive a higher profile, but projects for less spectacular animals are not hard to establish if correctly managed,” says Gyln Young, adding that Durrell’s ongoing programme for another world’s rarest duck, the Madagascar pochard has resulted in their increased numbers.
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In India, Assam’s conservation plans include four goals: habitat protection, population strengthening, awareness, and research. Indian organisations are currently conducting campaigns and surveys, which they hope will lead to media exposure and funding.
“We need to increase the population in India to save this species. If not, we will be able to see them only in zoos or in museums,” says Petry.
If these ducks are not conserved, their dance of love will be a sight confined to the aviaries.
