Distribution
The South American pochard has a fragmented range and is found from Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Argentina to Chile. Here it occurs in a wide variety of shallow fresh waters with submerged vegetation, from the lowlands up to 3,700 metres.The African pochard occurs from the Cape to the Ethiopian highlands on water bodies with or without emergent vegetation. They are suspected to have been strong migrants in the past but the construction of numerous farm dams seems to allow them a more sedentary lifestyle. They reach highest concentrations in Africa's central plateaus and in the south-western winter rainfall region.
Defense
The birds are solitary nesters, building nests out of leaves and stems on the banks of a river surrounded by vegetation. The female southern pochard lays a clutch consisting of six to fifteen eggs. The female incubates the eggs for 20 to 28 days. Once the eggs hatch, the mother leads them immediately to water.References:
Some text fragments are auto parsed from Wikipedia.
