EARTH · GLOBAL BIRD MAP · MIGRATORY
Wood Duck
Aix sponsa. One of the most ornately patterned ducks in the world, nesting in tree cavities near North American wetlands. Pooled openly through GBIF, the Wood Duck has been recorded 6,335,793 times across 84 countries — most often in United States, Canada and Mexico. The map above glows where those records cluster. It’s a known long-distance migrant, but the map shows records, not the journey — no routes, no arrows, no live position.
Counts are GBIF occurrence records published under CC0 or CC-BY only (the openly-reusable subset), so they are a floor, not the full holding — and they track observer effort, not just the bird.
Where it’s recorded most
The countries contributing the most openly-licensed records of the Wood Duck. This leans toward nations with many active birdwatchers and open data — it is a map of records, not of where the bird is most abundant.
How to read this map
Each bright cell is a cluster of times someone recorded a Wood Duckand shared it openly — a birder’s checklist, a photo, a museum specimen. It’s a real trace of the bird’s presence, but not a range map: the glow also follows where people look, so well-birded regions shine and quiet ones fade even if the bird is there. Because the Wood Duckmigrates, its records can span continents across the seasons — but this is a pooled all-time snapshot, so it shows the full footprint of sightings, not a moving front or a flight path. There is no LIVE badge: the figures are a snapshot dated 20 Jul 2026.