Greater scaup days. The down-covered ducklings are able to follow their mother in her search for food immediately after hatching. Greater scaup eat aquatic molluscs, plants, and insects, which they obtain by diving underwater. They form large groups, called "rafts", that can number in the thousands. Their main threat is human development, although they are preyed upon by owls, skunks, raccoons, foxes, coyotes, and humans. Greater scaup populations have been declining since the 1980s; however, they are still listed as a species of least concern on the IUCN Red List. The genus name "Aythya" is derived from the Ancient Greek "aithuia" which
Greater scaup Isles, western Norway, the southern tip of Sweden, the coast from Brittany to Poland, including all of Denmark, the Alps, the eastern Adriatic Sea, the northern and western Black sea and the southwestern Caspian Sea. In North America, the greater scaup summers in Newfoundland and Labrador, Ungava Bay, Hudson Bay, Lake Winnipeg, northern Yukon, northern Manitoba, and northern Saskatchewan. It winters along the coasts of North America from northern British Columbia south to the Baja Peninsula and from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick south to Florida, as well as the shores of the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico.