Greetings from Lisa Arensen. I do not have a beautiful photograph like Jeff--kudos to you, Jeff!
However, on April
13th, I saw a pair of white-winged ducks while with Ben Davis of ADRA, in a prospective
ecotourism site in central Prea Vihear. To be precise, we were walking along
Stung Bak Make, several miles from Ta Bos village in Sadou commune, Sangkhum
Tmei district. The commune chief claims there are three pairs of white-winged ducks that roost along this
quiet wooded river, but we can only confirm the one pair we saw. The area is
dry deciduous forest with some evergreen patches, and we had hiked
cross-country around five kilometres from the oxcart trail where we left the
trail before we saw the ducks (at around noon). There is no trail that runs
consistently along the stung/river, although there are resin tappers' and
hunters' paths that wind in and out, so we had been coming down to the
riverside intermittently as the terrain permitted. It had been a long hot
morning, and we had actually given up on finding the ducks and were inspecting
burned resin trees when we accidentally flushed a pair--they were quite close
to us and we both got good looks at them as they flew away. We did not get a
photograph, and neither of us has seen them before, but I feel confident that
they were white-winged ducks, not simply because of habitat but also because of
their large size, their white heads with dark spots, and their large white wing
patches. Area villagers had reported that the tia brai roost on this
river and that hunters hear them calling at night. Sadly, six of these rare
ducks were reported as killed and eaten last year (this is an unverified number
reported by the commune chief), and the commune chief remarked that ducklings
are rarely seen. Local villagers hunt with dogs, so Ben suspects that this may be
the fate of any ducklings, which I gather is also a threat to other
white-winged ducks in Cambodia?
