Cruise Ducks

It has become a tradition on cruise ships for passengers to bring small ducks to hide around the ship for others to find and either take home as souvenirs or re-hide for someone else to find. In preparation for a cruise along the Alaskan inside passage, I decided it would be fun to repaint a flock of rubber ducks to represent various North American duck species, making sure to include many species associated with Alaska. These ducks were painted in Missouri in April 2026, then took a train with me from Saint Louis to Chicago, where I joined a few others for an RV road trip up to Alaska to start the cruise and ‘release the ducks into the wild’ to continue their adventures.

If you have found one of these ducks, please go to its page and add a post indicating where you found it, and if you like add an image (or a few) showing further adventures of that duck with your travels, or just a selfie of the duck with your group. Then you can either choose to keep it as a souvenir, or send it on its way to continue further adventures.

The web page for each individual duck has both info about the actual duck species it is based on, as well as a blog of travel updates for each duck as they get added (I also started each duck out with some travel updates from their initial migration north to Alaska).

Edwin

Ruddy Duck

Howe

King Eider

Jackson

Common Eider

Joe

Spectacled Eider

John

Harlequin Duck

Lee

Steller's Eider

Les

Long-tailed Duck

Maynard

Bufflehead

Ripley

American Wigeon

Robert

Barrow's Goldeneye

Roger

Common Goldeneye

Roland

Northern Pintail