Ruddy Duck: This North American species were imported into wildfowl collections in Britain due the 50s. Some birds escaped from these collections and formed a free-flying population which expanded to cover most suitable habitat in the UK and by 2001 the ruddy duck population was around 6,000.
Eventually ruddy ducks were recorded in France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Numbers of Ruddy Ducks also began arriving in Spain from the late 1980s and in the early 1990s these started to hybridise with the globally threatened
