canberrabirds

at Kelly Swamp (1): return of the Red-necked Pochard

To: "'Geoffrey Dabb'" <>, <>
Subject: at Kelly Swamp (1): return of the Red-necked Pochard
From: "Philip Veerman" <>
Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2013 14:38:12 +1100
Geoffrey the red (apparently plastic) collar looks to me very much like the plastic ring that goes on juice bottle tops, that breaks off the lid when it is first opened. When I use those bottles I always cut these rings (so that even if an animal get entangled, they can quickly pull them off. Even though I wouldn't dispose of them in a place like that, we all should do that so that in several thousand years when humans are extinct, or a few hundred years when human civilisation doesn't exist, these things won't still be killing wildlife.
 
The amount of plastic debris around places like that is really appalling. The best that can be said is it appears not to be tight, so the bird may be able to live with it and I don't think they eat big things that would stop it feeding.
 
Philip
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Geoffrey Dabb [
Sent: Thursday, 21 November 2013 12:25 PM
To:
Subject: [canberrabirds] at Kelly Swamp (1): return of the Red-necked Pochard

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.

 

       

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