Ducks

[bunn]

 I was puzzled by the identity of these ducks today.  The one with the red face is male, and he is the sort of large, spectacularly ugly duck I often see hanging about on the slip at Calstock.  I had assumed that these were domesticated ducks, although I have had a look at the Websites of Duck Identification with no success.

However, his mate, the slim dark duck that swims low in the water and has a sheen of green on her black feathers,  looks nothing like him.   I would have thought she was a wild duck if the male duck had not attracted my attention through the medium of spectacularly loud and disturbingly violent Duck Sex.   If the chicks take after their father, I foresee a raft of ugly ducklings ahead.

Comments

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Anatidae will have noisy, and often successful, hybrid sex as often as anser.

Many years ago, I was outside working for my father, and occasionally shouting to a colleague. We were puzzled by one goose, which I thought was a pinkfoot and he thought was a brent. I mentioned it to my father afterwards and he said, oh yes, the pinkfoot brent cross that lives down there.

[kargicq.livejournal.com]

Muscovy duck?

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Yes! I think I must have overlooked it on the Websites of Duck Identification because only one individual was shown and I bet they picked a nice tidy-looking specimen that looked quite unlike this one.

With the name, I was able to do a google image search and discover that the unfortunate lady duck is probably a wild muscovy duck, being black with a green sheen, and her ugly partner is the domesticated type.

Definitely one of those situations where the wild type is so much more pleasing to the eye.

[kargicq.livejournal.com]

Glad to be of service! Agreed about the ugliness, though.

[anna-wing.livejournal.com]

The red one is a domesticated Muscovy duck. I have eaten many of them.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Hello anna_wing. If I might ask - do we know each other outside bunn's LJ? Your name seems familiar to me.

[anna-wing.livejournal.com]

I used to have Tolkien fanfic on HASA (it's all now at AO3 under Anna_Wing). Were you Celandine Brandybuck?

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

No, I have never written there (or read there very much).

I think I knew someone with that name when I was at school; but that was a long time ago!

[bunn.livejournal.com]

They all look different! I was sort of assuming that as a species, the bars and speckles would be more consistent. But I suppose that's domestication for you.

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

Some species of wild birds are also highly variable. I think red-tailed hawk variations took up two solid pages in Sibley's.