Mallard - Melanistic or Hybrid? West Midlands, UK (1 Viewer)

[KayD]

This odd Mallard has been knocking around at Stubbers Green in Walsall, W Mids for a while now. In some lights it looks green, other times it looks purple, it has an iredescent sheen to its feathers. It associates with male Mallards, but its body is a bit longer.

Could it be a wild Mallard with melanistic pigmentation or is it just some dodgy hybrid? Interested to know.

Cheers :t:

 

[John Cantelo]

What an extraordinarily attractive bird! My best guess is that it's a domestic strain of Mallard,

John

 

[nickderry]

that's weird! wow! I think this is the first time that a yuck duck has raised a wow!

 

[Dave B Smith]

Come on, someone's painted that bird! Incredible colors!

 

[fugl]

Your bird would appear to be a "Cayuga Duck", an uncommon American breed of domestic mallard: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cayuga_Duck

It's certainly a striking looking animal.

 

[Joern Lehmhus]

There are on eor two breeds with similar coloration but smaller than Cayuga. so if this bird was only slightly larger than wild mallard , it may be one of these races?

 

[KayD]

Aha Cayuga Duck - this looks like the chap!

Joern - I can't seem to find anything on the other two races, although it looks extremely similar to the Cayuga Ducks that I have googled.

Thanks all for your help :t:

 

[Joern Lehmhus]

One of them is the black east indian (at least I think that would be your name for that breed? German name for that breed is Smaragdente)

these:

http://www.ac-bueroservice.de/gefluegel/smaragdente.htm


with 0.9-1.2 kg they are much less heavy than Cayuga , which should be about 5-8kg according to the web, much bigger than any wild mallard.

 

[Joern Lehmhus]

Black East Indian (= Smaragdente)

http://www.das-digitale-gefluegelbu..._phocagallery&view=category&id=92:&Itemid=147


Cayuga

http://www.das-digitale-gefluegelbu..._phocagallery&view=category&id=76:&Itemid=147

I don´t know which one it is from the photos as i have not much experience with domestic duck races, but maybe you can decide with these links....

Whichever it is it is clearly a domestic duck, which doesn´t belong to the wild. And it is not a true hybrid , as both races are domestic breeds derived from wild mallard ancestors...

 

[KayD]

Hi Joern. Thanks for this.

I think it was the Cayuga as its body looked longer. I havn't seen it out of the water, so its hard to judge the weight.

Here it is next to another Mallard, it does look bulkier.

I'll have another look next time I'm there.

 

[Joern Lehmhus]

well, looks fat enough for that....

 

[craftygirl]

I wonder what the other ducks think of him?
*Show-off......*

It's funny that this was posted today, earlier this morning I was reading a bird book I grabbed from the library, The Life of Birds by David Attenborough. I was reading about feather coloration, how some colors are due to pigments while others come from internal structures within the feather. Attenborough mentioned that the iridescent green on a mallard's head, on the "eye" of a peacock's feather, or on the breast of a hummingbird is actually a result of a modification on the filaments in a feather, and something about the modification makes the feather useless in flight. I remember the phrase (and I'm paraphrasing here) "that is why this kind of iridescence is never seen on flight feathers."

So I wonder about this Cayuga Duck. Is it another kind of iridescence, or have the feathers "adapted" somehow so to speak?