Ogar - Aŋyr

Ogar.

A large duck (weight 1.2–1.6 kg) with a rusty-red coloration and an ochre-white head. The flight feathers, tail, beak, and legs are black. It walks well on land. It also swims well, but rarely dives. It flies quickly. A noisy bird. In flight, it emits a ringing, guttural, and mournful "ang... ang." The female hisses in the nest when danger approaches. For most of the year, these ducks stay in pairs.

Ogar usually nests in the burrows of foxes or badgers, but often in abandoned buildings, crevices along water bodies, and even in the attics of residential buildings. There have been cases where ogars nested in tree hollows, similar to goosanders. The hollows were deep, mostly located in larches at a height of 4-10 m. The birds chose trees with hollows on the edges of clearings and near forest streams, sometimes several kilometers from the lake. In ogars, it is the female that finds the male, rather than the male choosing the female. Both parents incubate and raise the chicks until they fledge. The clutch consists of 5–7 eggs of ivory color; the chicks appear at the end of April.

The Ogar finds its food both in water and on land. It prefers plant-based food: seeds and green shoots of herbaceous plants and cereals. However, it does not disdain insects: locusts, grasshoppers, etc. In the water, it searches for mollusks, crustaceans, small fish, and even frogs.

At the end of summer, on harvested fields, ogars pick up seeds from sown winter crops or forage along roads, pecking at spilled grain. Ogar prefers to search for food at night or in twilight, while resting during the day.

Distribution: across the lakes and rivers of Kyrgyzstan.

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