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Introduced birds in Europe (1 Viewer)

Birdwatching community has not yet waken up to Cackling Goose and Ruddy Shelduck.

Both have large breeding populations in Western Europe. Both should be in any bird guidebook for Europe with a distribution map. And on Cat. C in all countries bordering their current feral range.

Egyptian Goose still exists in bird guidebooks as "small feral population in England and migrant in Egypt". Population in continental Central Europe is now far larger than both, with five digit numbers in the Netherlands alone.
 
Birdwatching community has not yet waken up to Cackling Goose and Ruddy Shelduck. Both have large breeding populations in Western Europe. Both should be in any bird guidebook for Europe with a distribution map. And on Cat. C in all countries bordering their current feral range.

I've seen Ruddy Shelduck, at least two pairs, in a shallow, farmed forest-bordered valley in Franconia, about midway between Würzburg and Nürnberg.
MJB
 
@MJB
Almost certainly cat. C. Strictly for educational purposes, I am attaching a quick screenshot of Ruddy Shelducks probable and confirmed breeding in Germany in 2018 from ornitho.de. I hope they don't mind. You see, not rare at all.
 

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@MJB
Almost certainly cat. C. Strictly for educational purposes, I am attaching a quick screenshot of Ruddy Shelducks probable and confirmed breeding in Germany in 2018 from ornitho.de. I hope they don't mind. You see, not rare at all.

My observation is right in the middle of one of the red dots! Thanks for the map.
MJB
 
I've seen Ruddy Shelduck, at least two pairs, in a shallow, farmed forest-bordered valley in Franconia, about midway between Würzburg and Nürnberg.
MJB


It is a Euronative though just much further east.

See some earlier posts for where the whole Ruddy 'can of worms' leads. :eek!:
 
@MJB
Almost certainly cat. C. Strictly for educational purposes, I am attaching a quick screenshot of Ruddy Shelducks probable and confirmed breeding in Germany in 2018 from ornitho.de. I hope they don't mind. You see, not rare at all.
And BOU still automatically reject every single one in Britain as a local escape . . . crazy! :eek!: :eek!: :eek!:

High time it was upgraded to C5 in Britain.
 
Guys, Ruddy Shelduck is a native European breeding species.
This thread is about birds from other biogeographic realms eg. Neotropics, Afrotropics etc. established in Europe.
 
A few sources of info on Non-native birds in Portugal:
# Field guide (in Portuguese): Aves Exóticas que Nidificam em Portugal Continental (not available commercially, info a bit outdated, from 2002)
# Non-native birds in Portugal 2005-08: PDF (in Portuguese, but info pretty straightforward to understand IMO)
# Non-native birds in Portugal 2009-10: PDF (in Portuguese, with English summary)
# Non-native birds in Portugal 2011: PDF (in Portuguese, with English summary)

That's a lot of great work there Rafael. Are you still collecting and collating records and will you be publishing them?
 
Ringed teal has bred for several consecutive Years with up to 2 pairs in Dortmund, Germany.
Population is gone now (probably collected and sold) so not sure if it should be put on the list.

Snow Goose has a self sustaining population in Neuss, Germany.

never heard of Yellow-billed Teals in Germany.
 
For interest: records of Cackling Goose in The Netherlands in summer 2018., showing how widespread is feral population. Scan from waarneming.nl. It is a nice complement for e.g. records in Britain.

(Waarneming used to be able to select only actual breeding records, but unfortunately this function disappeared. Instead, it is now possible to see records of Cackling Goose made with bat detectors or snake plates - whatever the snake plate is).
 

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Muscovy Ducks

How is domestic-type Muscovy Duck defined for purposes of having a viable feral population in a country? You will probably see small groups of free-range muscovies (including families with ducklings) if you stroll our countryside, but they actually belong to someone, just like domestic Greylag Geese that walk in flocks to water every morning and back to barn in the evening. If I saw a Muscovy at a pond or a river I would assume it belongs to the closest farmhouse visible in the background. The only Muscovies we consider countable in eBird are those within the city limits where a law forbids owning poultry so we consider them feral (so far no ducklings recorded).
 
How is domestic-type Muscovy Duck defined for purposes of having a viable feral population in a country? You will probably see small groups of free-range muscovies (including families with ducklings) if you stroll our countryside, but they actually belong to someone, just like domestic Greylag Geese that walk in flocks to water every morning and back to barn in the evening. If I saw a Muscovy at a pond or a river I would assume it belongs to the closest farmhouse visible in the background. The only Muscovies we consider countable in eBird are those within the city limits where a law forbids owning poultry so we consider them feral (so far no ducklings recorded).
A bit like the feral population of Gallus gallus I once reported 'in the field just before the farm with the "Free Range Eggs for sale" sign' 3:)
 
There is no standard what counts as established feral population.

Muscovy population in the Netherlands counted as wild for some time. It made sense, because there were many groups of domestic Muscovies in Randstadt megalopolis (Amsterdam-Rotterdam), which has no poultry owners and lacks foxes or any other larger predators. This metropolis supported viable feral populations of chicken, Muscovies, domestic ducks and domestic geese.

Latter Dutch apparently stopped including any non-native birds in the bird list.

Naturally, it would be stupid to trust what somebody puts on Ebird. A person can be a local familiar with the area and its birds, or a travelling novice birdwatcher who is completely clueless. Recently somebody put on ebird all exotic wildfowl collection in London's city park, only sensibly asked online why ten big rarities were swimming together. But overall ebird turns to be a surprisingly good tool to follow new exotics establishing themselves, which are easily ignored by advanced birders.
 
Ringed teal has bred for several consecutive Years with up to 2 pairs in Dortmund, Germany.
Population is gone now (probably collected and sold) so not sure if it should be put on the list.

I saw a couple of ringed teals in Geneva (near the end of the lake) a couple of years ago (with a ruddy shelduck close by as I recall). I assumed they were recent escapes at the time, but sounds like the shelduck and possibly even the teal could be established / establishing feral breeding populations?
 
Ruddy Shelduck is naturalized in Switzerland. Unless it had a collection ring, it should be countable. Not the ringed teal, though.

Going just slightly off topic. Anybody knows recent counts and history of escaped parrots on Tenerife? It was really amusing to see a morning flight of a dozen of Amazona ssp. over Puerto de la Cruz, like in Brazil or Colombia.

Apparently many parrots of various species escaped over the years from the local zoo Loro Parque, and most settled in the nearby city park. Not naturalized of course, but would be interesting to know how many and what species are there.
 
Ruddy Shelduck is naturalized in Switzerland. Unless it had a collection ring, it should be countable. Not the ringed teal, though.

.

Thanks for info...fortunately I've got 'proper' Ruddy Shelduck from India and Nepal on my list, but I'll add the record to Scythebill as an 'introduced'.

Don't know if anyone else like me is a little more reluctant to count naturalised waterfowl compared to other species (e.g. ring-necked parakeet)?
 
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