Friday, December 26, 2014

We need help to solve a Boxing Day mystery

We went for a walk today, like you do, to blow away the Christmas cobwebs. A lake near our house gives us a pleasant stroll without having to use a car first

mill pond

and today it gave us one thing to marvel at, and another to wonder at.  The thing that we marvelled at was the steady stream of cars going into the McDonald’s drive-thru just across from the lake. On Boxing day!  Have these people never heard of bubble and squeak? 

Anyway we pressed on round the lake where there are shellducks, cormorants, mallards, canada geese, dabchicks, coots, moorhens, tufted ducks, common gulls and terns and this mystery bird . . .

mystery duck 1

mystery duck 2

It’s a duck captain, but not as we know it.  Rather dapper though don’t you think?  I can’t find it in books or on google images.  I’m guessing its a hybrid of some sort but of what? It’s bigger than a mallard but not as big as a goose. I’ve seen pictures of greeny black ducks, but they don’t have that coppery coloured head.  My guess is that a shellduck has been got at by perhaps a mallard or ???.

Can anyone out there shed any light?

6 comments:

Vallypee said...

What a lovely bird! I have no idea what it is but shall come back to see if anyone else knows!

Jim said...

Well, That duck is certainly a mystery - although not quite as big a one as why anyone should want to go to a drive-through McDonalds (at any time, let alone Boxing Day)
Jim (ex-Starcross)

Anonymous said...

With my tongue in cheek perhaps it is called a "Mill Pond" duck.
Ken Tidy {James's}grandad

Anonymous said...

Happy New Year to you both - hope we get to meet up in 2015.

Sue & the Indigodreamers

Anonymous said...

we had duck on Christmas day instead of turkey, probably a cousin of the one in image

Sue said...

That looks like an African Black Duck but it doesn't have quite as much black on its back.

The web feet are the same though