Among various points of interest at Kelly Swamp this morning was a female Hardhead with a red (apparently plastic) collar. This seemed too inconspicuous to have been used as a tag for field identification. It might have been a tether for a tame hardhead, but it is some time since I’ve seen a duck on a leash being led along the dog path. The possibility of some kind of accidental snaring remains. I take this opportunity to mention the confusion suggested by the English names of this species. The CSIRO book and HANZAB both give ‘widgeon’ as one English name. That name was appropriately discarded because ‘wigeon’ was used for northern hemisphere species in the genus Anas, and therefore not closely related. The Hardhead is in the genus Aythya and might therefore be regarded as a ‘pochard’ (in northern hemisphere terms). Indeed, ‘Australian Pochard’ is one of the names given in HBW, although ‘pochard’ is not mentioned in the 2 first-mentioned references. I would guess that ‘pochard’ was a later classification-based suggestion, not known to Australian shooters who were out bagging ‘hardheads’ - or ‘widgeons’. Neither ‘pochard’ nor ‘widgeon’ is mentioned in the Ian Fraser book.
