| The Question: I have searched for the one species of duck that is said to be able to live in Antarctica, but I have yet to find anything more about it. My guess is that if such a duck exists it would possibly survive on one of the subantarctic islands, or on Ross Island which, I think, still has some residual volcanic activity. Would you please provide some more information on this topic? Submitted by: Aaron |
The Short Answer: According to Avibase, the one duck that is occasionally seen in parts of coastal Antarctica is the yellow-billed pintail (Anas georgica). This was confirmed for me by Dr. Peter Convey with the British Antarctic Survey who added that “There are no breeding ducks on the Antarctic mainland (continent or Antarctic Peninsula and offshore archipelagoes).”
So it sounds like the yellow-billed pintail is your mystery duck. It occasionally vacations in Antarctica, but doesn’t stay long enough to breed.
The yellow-billed pintail is one of the most common ducks in South America and is found over most of the western and southern parts of the continent, excluding the Amazon and other rainforest areas. There is also a well-known subspecies, the South Georgia pintail (Anas georgica georgica), which is found primarily on South Georgia, one of the southernmost islands that is not considered to be part of the Antarctic continent. On South Georgia, the ducks are primarily nocturnal and eat shrimp, amphipods, other crustaceans, snails and other invertebrates, as well as marine algae. The nocturnal feeding habits may be an adaptation to predation by the Antarctic skua (Stercorarius antarcticus), a large seabird which catches adult ducks on the fly during daylight hours.
January being summer in the Southern Hemisphere, we are currently in the breeding season for the yellow-billed pintail. The population on South Georgia typically lays five eggs, with two or three clutches possible in a season. In the 19th century, the South Georgia pintail was hunted by the crews of whaling vessels, and these days, they suffer from predation by introduced rats, but the population seems stable.
More Information:
Sharing South Georgia Island with the South Georgia pintail is the speckled teal (Anas flavirostris). Other far southern islands that have ducks include the Falklands (also called the Malvinas) off the coast of Argentina and Macquarie Island south of Australia and New Zealand. Like South Georgia Island, the Falklands have both speckled teals and yellow-billed pintails as well as several other duck and goose species. Macquarie Island has Pacific black ducks (Anas superciliosa) grey teal (Anas gibberifrons) and non-native mallards (Anas platyrhynchos). None of these other species are known to visit Antarctica, however.
Sources:
Janet Kear (2005). Ducks, Geese and Swans, Oxford University Press.
McCracken, K.G. and Wilson, R.E. (2011). Gene flow and hybridization between numerically imbalanced populations of two duck species in the Falkland Islands. PLos ONE, 6(8).
Catalogue of Australian Antarctic and Subantarctic Metadata: http://gcmd.nasa.gov/KeywordSearch/Metadata.do?Portal=amd_au&KeywordPath=[Keyword%3D%27MACQUARIE+ISLAND%27]&NumericId=20602&MetadataView=Full&MetadataType=0&lbnode=mdlb3, accessed on January 20, 2012.
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the similarities. Richard Vetter, a spider researcher at the University 
of California, Riverside, is on a one man mission to reduce mis-identification of brown recluse spiders by doctors and emergency crews. For example, it’s not uncommon for doctors in the northern parts of the United States to identify the cause of a rash or infection as a brown recluse bite even though the northern limit of the spiders’ range is about the middle of Iowa. Dr. Vetter’s range map shows that the brown recluse and other members of the Loxosceles genus (also dangerous) are only found in southern and western parts of the United States. Yet “official” reports of brown recluse bites come from all over the country.
are trained to identify spiders.
Vetter suggests that the surest way to identify a brown recluse is to look deep into its eyes. As shown in the picture to the left, all members of the Loxosceles genus have six eyes, in three pairs arranged in an arc, whereas almost all other spiders have eight eyes, variously arranged. If you see a spider in your yard, you might not want to get close enough to check its eye pattern, making Vetter’s advice not very useful. But Vetter’s goal is to reduce misdiagnosis of skin conditions in doctor’s offices. If a patient shows a doctor a dead spider and says “I think I was bitten by a brown recluse,” it’s simple enough to put the spider under a magnifying glass to check the eye pattern. This is important because misidentifying the cause of the rash as a brown recluse may cause the doctor to ignore other possibilities such as bacterial infections.
So the answer to your question is that they hatch from April to September. Charles, an AskaNaturalist.com reader from Kansas, recently reported that chrysalises on his deck metamorphosed in late September. His butterflies (one is shown here) will probably arrive in Mexico soon, along with tens of millions of other monarchs. Pretty soon they’ll all be waiting for you to visit them at Mariposa Monarca Biosphere Reserve. Let us know how it goes. Bring back pictures!