Tag
Ducks: plumage, moult, hybrids, and the birds mistaken for them
Ducks cause more identification trouble than their familiarity suggests, because they moult dramatically, hybridise readily and share every town lake with domestic birds. Eclipse plumage, manky Mallards and hybrid identification all sit here.
- Eclipse plumage in ducks: moult and identification
For a few weeks each summer a drake wears the duck's colours and cannot fly. What eclipse plumage is, when it happens, and how identification survives it.
- Mallard hybrids: identification of domestic and feral crosses
Mallard hybrids, and the birds mistaken for them. How to tell a true cross from a feral domestic duck, and which field marks still mean something.
- Manky mallard: identification of domestic and feral park ducks
The odd ducks on every town lake have a name. What a manky mallard is, where the domestic genes come from, and how to tell one from a genuine hybrid.
- Burdur Lake: the wintering site the White-headed Ducks left
A closed basin in south-western Turkey once held most of the world's wintering White-headed Ducks. It has lost 47% of its water, and the ducks moved on.
- Scaly-sided Merganser and the legacy of river engineering
An Endangered duck that needs clean, fast rivers with mature trees along them, and what large-scale river works leave behind.
Notesshort entries, not full articles
- Surveying wintering Scaly-sided Mergansers in Korea
A river survey update on an Endangered duck with a world population of around 1,700 pairs, a significant share of which winters in the Republic of Korea.