This is actually a worrying issue. I believe that in New Zealand there are virtually no pure Pacific Black Ducks left (In NZ they call the NZ subspecies ‘Grey Duck’). Rather, they have a self-perpetuating (true breeding??) hybrid population
with virtually no pure PBD genetic material left.
We would not want this to happen in Australia but statistical biological logic says that once it has started the mallard genes will spread throughout the genepool.
There is a mallard on Ginninderra pond. When fishing there, I have sometimes wondered if I should catch it and eat it and leave the Murray Cod for another day…
From: Christine <>
Date: Friday, 11 May 2018 at 12:12 pm
To: chatline <>
Subject: Re: [canberrabirds] Re: Information & ID of a Duck?
If Geoffrey is right about it being the one from West Belconnen Pond (which I think quite likely),
then this was a duckling from last summer, and I have some very very poor photos from 2nd Jan 2017, The mother was a Mallard type, probably a hybrid, and the other duck in your photos is probably one of its siblings, as the ducklings were very close for over
a year, and seen together (as in Geoffrey's photo), just the 5 or 6 of them, usually a little apart from the other mallards.
A couple of years before there was a Mallard type female with 12 ducklings - 6 yellow and 6
brown, but I only saw them once as tiny ducklings, so assume they all did not make it.
So yes, the domestic "Mallards" are breeding in the wild at WBP.
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