Hi Judith
There is indeed a Paradise Shelduck in NZ - female has a white head/
neck but Chestnut brown body.
Google will bring up results pretty easily.
Cheers
Dave
On 13/09/2007, at 2:33 PM, wrote:
Greetings all!
In Uniacke's account of Oxley's expedition to Port Curtis & Moreton
Bay (from Barron Field, ed., 1825), the following paragraphs
appear, from about Sunday 16 November or soon after, somewhere
around Boyne river-mouth/Port Curtis (Gladstone):
"In the course of the day I shot a very beautiful and uncommon kind
of duck, which some of our crew had before seen in New Zealand,
where it has the name of the Paradise Duck. The head and neck were
white, the bill red, the back a glossy dark green, and the wings
regularly striped with blue, yellow, green, and white. Its flesh,
however, was dry, and very fishy."
Uniacke had been spent the day in an unsuccessful search for fresh
drinking water, examining "different creeks, all of which ended in
mangrove swamps," then returned across the snake- and shark-filled
harbour to the vessel. (A "large pond" of fresh water was, however,
found later, nearby.)
So -- what can this "Paradise Duck" have been?
From the description, the only two vague possibilities seem to be
the Radjah Shelduck, or the Cotton Pygmy-Goose. The Radjah Shelduck
fits some of the description (having a PINK bill, but a brown
back), and has been known as the Burdekin Duck. The Cotton Pygmy-
Goose -- called, in Cayley (1951), the Cotton Teal -- has a white
FACE and neck, and green back, but its bill is nowhere near red
(only the Green Pygmy-Goose has some red on its lower bill).
Neither species fits the striped-wing description. This habitat is
tropical, and Pizzey (2001) does NOT list the international
distribution of either bird as including NZ; he gives the habitat
of the Cotton Pygmy-Goose as freshwater. Morcombe (2000) shows both
species as occupying coastal wetlands, and includes mangrove and
littoral habitat in his description of the Burdekin Duck. From
other references it seems that, in 1825, both these species would
have been found further south along the coast, down into present-
day NSW. Why then had the bird not been seen before by any of the
crew (except in NZ)?
Does anyone out there have a NZ field guide, or HANZAB, to cross-
check? Perhaps there's a similar white-headed "shelduck" in NZ...
Perhaps there's even a bird there called the Paradise Duck.
(Also, about 12 miles up the "beautiful" Boyne River, on mosquito-
and sandfly-infested, rich-soil floodplain, Uniacke shot "a kind of
owl that none of us had seen before". He describes timbered hills
nearby, but sadly does not describe the owl.)
Cheers,
Judith.
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