Thanks Christine. Useful information. I wouldn’t be surprised by local breeding within a ‘hybrid group’, which you confirm. I wonder if pure P Black Ducks
are being recruited into the pool, either as male or female. One clue is leg colour – female mallards and some hybrids will have orange/yellow legs. PBD leg colour more dull greenish rather like that right hand hybrid. Watch for shovelers, though. g
From: Christine [
Sent: Friday, 11 May 2018 12:10 PM
To: COG 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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