hybrid duck (1 Viewer)

Hi, I would like to hear your opinions on this duck:
mallard sized,
light parts of bill bright yellow like mallard,
legs orange.
Speculum not seen,
call shorter and more hard/rough sounding than mallard

It was together with about 50 mallards at the island of Wangerooge in October 1994.

Looks like the front end of a Teal and the back end of a Gadwall but I would have thought any Teal hybrid would be smaller than a Mallard.

E

This image is probably a little bit brighter

Hmmmm . . .
Teal head,
Mallard size, & leg colour,
Pintail tail,
Gadwall body, & bill pattern,
. . . . what a weird critter! what else is there in there?!?

Michael

Falcated Teal is bigger than other teal...

hybrid Mallard X Pintail.

Yes, it is a real weirdo. But it is definitely not a Mallard x Pintail.
Those have a blue bill, dark brown head with a strong green shine over the whole head, the front half of the mallards white neck ring and dirty orange-ochre coloured legs.

My first idea was also mallard x teal, but I was worried about the size (like mallard). The long middle tail feathers, like pintails did not worry me. I think that the length of the feather comes from the mallard parent, itis just the mallard feathers without the curl.

falcated teal was also an option, but there i would have expected at least a hint of the falcatets long "mane" and long feathers on the back. And I would not have expected such a bright rusty brown in the head and not such bright orange feet.

What was really making the bird stand out from the mallard group was the monochrome light grey body(as light as the mallards grey), without any trace of that conspicuous darker "shadow" along the mallard flanks.
With that it really stood out even to the bare eye.

The head shape was also characteristic, with a higher front than in mallard. And the bill was slightly thinner...

Well my guess is that this is just a mallard x gadwall hybrid, allthough the reddish brown head is worrying me a little bit. On the following web pages you find photographs of other such hybrids:

Sorry did something wrong, here are the web pages: http://fog.ccsf.cc.ca.us/~jmorlan/brdu.htm, http://www.unge.com/ystad/galleri.asp

The bird I saw looks somewhat different from both, but they also differ from each other. And in general hybrids do not seem to be as uniform as pure species?

And at this page there is a presumed hybrid gadwall x falcated teal
http://www.wbkenglish.com/hybducks.asp

Hi Joern,

Helps to put each link address on a new line - the comma at the end of the first is the cause of the problem, it should be:
http://fog.ccsf.cc.ca.us/~jmorlan/brdu.htm
and the second:
http://www.unge.com/ystad/bild.asp?id=9

Michael

Thanks Michael, will do that next time