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It has warmed up a little (which is to say that it was 50F (10°C) when I checked at noon) so I suggested to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cattitude that we go look at ducks. Usually, this means walk through the park in just enough of a loop to go down to the river and wave at the mallards and the Canada geese on our way to subway, grocery, or lunch.
Today, the ducks included a canvasback. When we first moved in here [1987, since I was asked recently], the winter bird population regularly included canvasbacks. (They summer well north of us.) Several years ago, they stopped returning. For a while, we might see one passing through in spring or fall, but that was it. Then none at all for a while.
This was one duck, swimming on the inlet, further out than the mallards, dabbling a little. (They're diving ducks, so I expect them to disappear entirely under the water, not just do the tail-pointing-straight-up thing that mallards do.) I hope he stays, and some of his kinfolk drop by.
What we didn't see was any white domestic ducks [released or escaped]. There was one for a while this summer. Then two. Then three. Then four. I think the population got as high as six, hanging out together, four and two, in cozy clusters on a bit of riverbank between the water and the paved path. They came to take food from humans when offered, but that's not distinctive: the mallards around here also come over for bread, though they prefer to stay in the water while being fed. We didn't look around thoroughly, so they might still be around. Or they might have grown their flight feathers back and headed for warmer climes. Or they might have become someone's holiday dinner, a fate only delayed rather than evaded.
cattitude that we go look at ducks. Usually, this means walk through the park in just enough of a loop to go down to the river and wave at the mallards and the Canada geese on our way to subway, grocery, or lunch.Today, the ducks included a canvasback. When we first moved in here [1987, since I was asked recently], the winter bird population regularly included canvasbacks. (They summer well north of us.) Several years ago, they stopped returning. For a while, we might see one passing through in spring or fall, but that was it. Then none at all for a while.
This was one duck, swimming on the inlet, further out than the mallards, dabbling a little. (They're diving ducks, so I expect them to disappear entirely under the water, not just do the tail-pointing-straight-up thing that mallards do.) I hope he stays, and some of his kinfolk drop by.
What we didn't see was any white domestic ducks [released or escaped]. There was one for a while this summer. Then two. Then three. Then four. I think the population got as high as six, hanging out together, four and two, in cozy clusters on a bit of riverbank between the water and the paved path. They came to take food from humans when offered, but that's not distinctive: the mallards around here also come over for bread, though they prefer to stay in the water while being fed. We didn't look around thoroughly, so they might still be around. Or they might have grown their flight feathers back and headed for warmer climes. Or they might have become someone's holiday dinner, a fate only delayed rather than evaded.
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That he was a drake is significant, though we couldn't tell the first year.
The next year, some of the ducklings were yellow balls of fluff, instead of mallard brown. As grown ducks, they were clearly slightly not all mallard, but not very different.
In subsequent years, this spread like a genetics experiment, and by the time I left Lancaster the entire local mallard population was part-Aylesbury, and a normal flock of ducklings would contain one of two yellow ones.
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I don't know what sort of hybridization we'll get, if the white ducks are back in the spring: they'd been socializing separately from the mallards and geese. (The mallards don't exactly socialize with the Canada geese, but they'll feed on the same patch of water or grass, and these ducks were staying by themselves.)