A sexually dimorphic sea duck, the Labrador Duck was a migratory bird that wintered on the coasts of New England and New Jersey and nested in Labrador during summer. They were thought to have laid their eggs in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, but little was known about their behaviour on this matter.

They feasted on molluscs, relying on them far more than any other sea bird of North America, which may have contributed to their extinction when settlers began to harvest for these molluscs to use as bait.

It is hard to say just why the Labrador Duck became the first endemic North American bird since European contact to go the way of the dodo. They were not hunted for their meat, as it was said to be of bad taste, but their eggs were harvested for human consumption and this may have hurt an already straining population. The incoming settlers pushed them out of an already highly specialized niche, which may have already made them a rare bird, and they soon died out in the late 19th century.

Extinction Date According to the IUCN Red List: c. 1878