Hullo Michael,
As a rule, Mallard/Black Duck hybrids tend to have orange feet like
their Mallard ancestors. It certainly held good for all the
Mallard/Blackie hybrids which we saw infesting New Zealand and for
several I've seen here, even where the plumage seemed standard Blackie.
Another Mallard characteristic which crops up in the hybrids is a pale
streak down the centre of the dark upper body feathers and wing coverts.
Anthea Fleming
> Hi all,
>
> I stopped briefly at Chiltern this morning on the way home to
> Melbourne. At the Chiltern Valley No.1 Dam we noticed a strangley
> plumaged Black Duck. It was largely off white on the upperparts. Its
> eye stripe was faintly visiable, a pale fawn colour while its
> underparts were a blotchy mixture of fawn and off white. It was
> observed associating with other Black Ducks, and then seen with 10
> normally plumaged ducklings. These may have not been it's young as
> there were other Black Ducks around.
>
> I did consider it could have been an escaped domestic breed, or a
> hybrid, however it was the same size as they other Black ducks and
> flew strongly. Most escapees or hybrids I have seen are larger than
> Black Ducks and cannot fly strongly, or at all. Has anyone ever seen
> any similarly plumaged ducks. In October 2001 I observed a leucistic
> Pink-eared Duck at the Old Wodonga Sewage Ponds.
>
> Also of note at Chiltern was a Painted Honeyeater at Bartley's Block.
>
> Michael Ramsey, Whittlesea.
--------------------------------------------
Birding-Aus is now on the Web at
www.birding-aus.org
--------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message 'unsubscribe
birding-aus' (no quotes, no Subject line)
to
|
