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Friday, January 22, 2010

Strange Waterfowl

Northern Shovelers are a common overwintering waterfowl in Prospect Park, so I rarely pay them much attention. It took the fresh, unjaded eyes of my friend Heydi to point out that one looked very different.

At first we thought that it was a hybrid; maybe a cross between a Northern Shoveler and Blue-winged Teal. It has the overall shape of a shoveler and the distinctive large, spatulate bill. Unlike the Northern Shoveler, but similar to a Blue-winged Teal, it has a white, vertical patch on the front of its face. The Northern Shoveler also has a clean, white breast. This bird has an off-white breast with a fine, dark hatch pattern. The pattern also extends to its red flanks.

I looked online for information on shoveler x teal hybrids and found a few websites with photographs of similar looking birds. Most were listed as Northern Shoveler / Blue-winged Teal hybrids. Looking up information on non-North American species of shovelers I discovered that there is an Australasian Shoveler - Anas rhynchotis. To my eye, it seems that the bird in Prospect Park is not a hybrid, but an Australasian Shoveler. I don't think that there is anyway to prove that this bird flew from Australia to Brooklyn and a more plausible explanation is that it escaped from a zoo or other private collection. It does make you wonder, though, because stranger vagrants have appeared within the borders of New York City from very distant lands.

Here's a video of the Prospect Park duck.

4 comments:

  1. That is a weird bird. I would lean towards hybrid as an explanation, but an escaped Australasian Shoveler is very well possible.

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  2. Escapee is possible. Bronx Zoo? Where else could it have possibly come from?

    I had a friend in Florida who had so many rarities in her backyard pond when one of those big hurricanes hit and the Parrot Jungle aviary got destroyed.
    Marge

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  3. The 4th Ed. of the National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of N. America states that the male "in early fall has a white crescent on each side of its face, like the Blue-winged Teal" and then gives a corresponding depiction of this.

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  4. Wrong time of year for a juvenile bird. Other plumage differences are head color, plus, Nat. Geo. doesn't show the body, which looks a lot like the female plumage.

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