Cape Shelduck

Named after the Cape of Good Hope, the foul-tempered Cape or South African Shelducks (Tadorna Cana) are better known as Berggans by the Afrikaaners. The sexes are dissimilar, the female is slightly smaller than the male and has irregular white blotches on the face, the male has a gray head. Juveniles are similar to the male, but are paler and duller with brownish edgings to their upperwing-coverts. Floating low on the water, they usually swim with rear ends well elevated. They are open-country, seasonal brackish pans when swollen by seasonal rains. Typically shy and wary, they sometimes dwell around farms in a semi-domesticated state, and are regarded as agricultural pets in some districts. They are highly nomadic during the dry season and feed chiefly at night and in swallow water or graze ashore often on agricultural lands. They also dig on exposed mud flats in quest of insects,grass, seed, grain, algae, plants, larvae, pupae and crustaceans. Pairs seemingly remain together outside the reproductive season. The birds establish long-term pair bonds and in the dry season (June-July) paired cape shelducks build a nest of plant matter, lined with a thick coat of down, in an old mammal burrow, or other cavity. The female lays one-to-15 eggs, which hatch in 30 days. The chicks are dark brown on top and silvery white underneath and they fledge in about 10 weeks. Nests are not located in feeding or rearing territories, they can be more than a mile from water. Cape Shelducks (Tadorna Cana) are seasonal gregarious, particularly during the flightless molt in November and December. Molters and juveniles shift to traditional sites on large, deep lakes and damps, gathering in flocks of hundreds, and occasionally even up to 5,ooo ducks. Their breeding season is from May to June, in the wild, they use holes and burrows made by other animals, in captivity, use a half-buried, as in other Shelducks. Fledgling period is about 70 days and the young are tended to by both parents. Presently, Cape Shelducks (Tadorna Cana) are common and stable in their limited range. They are dependent upon a very few unique locations where they congregate in large numbers to molt. They also need many mammal burrows for nest sites. The elimination of black-backed jackals has hurt these ducks because the jackal once ate small predators that now eat the Cape Shelducks (Tadorna Cana) eggs.