Did you know that Hawaiʻi is home to one of the rarest ducks in the world?
The Laysan duck, also known as the Laysan teal, is about 16 inches long and weighs roughly the same as a large apple.
Its plumage is mostly brown, with iridescent purple-green wing patches and white rings around its eyes.
Laysan ducks have an incredibly small geographic range. Until recently, they could only be found on the 911-acre Laysan Island in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.
Over the last decade, they've been successfully translocated to Midway and Kure Atolls, but that's still far from the Laysan ducks' historical range. Fossil evidence shows that they were once present across the entire Hawaiian archipelago.
Audio credit: Percy Ulsamer, Xeno Canto (XC862236)
