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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