That thing's giant! Paradise Shelduck? Mallard on steroids?? Mallard x
Egyptian Goose???
Jacob Mathison
jacobmathison1.wixsite.com/nature-photography
<http://jacobmathison1.wixsite.com/nature-photography>
"If you keep a green tree in your heart, perhaps a singing bird will
come." ~Chinese Proverb
On Mon, Jan 29, 2018 at 5:40 PM, Megan Cash <mlcash7@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
So, My dad and I were birding the pond at Canby Community Park this
afternoon around 3:00pm. Now, normally my dad and I are pretty decent at
ID-ing birds. But this one threw us for a loop. My first thought was a
really awkward Mallard, and it may yet still be. It was completely brown,
with it's head a darker brown (sometimes slightly purplish in the right
light) and a green-gray wing patch. The distribution of the colors seems
closely consistent with a Mallard, with the head being very dark, a brown
chest with a slight white neck ring in between the two (though not complete
on this bird), the wing patch and a darker rear-end. It's bill also screams
"Duck" to me despite it being a dark grey - sometimes blue-ish - and it's
legs are dark orange.
That being said, maybe it's a Mallard that just has a really awkward
coloring the likes of which I've never seen, but it's size was a bit
ridiculous. It was at least half again as big as the Mallards around it,
almost a decent Cackling Goose size, especially when standing. For some
reason when I look at it, the head screams "Duck" but the body screams
"Goose". I guess it's quite possible for it to simply be an abnormally
large, for lack of a better term "dark-morph" Mallard. Maybe this bird has
been seen around and nobody really reported anything about it because they
clearly knew what it was and didn't think it particularly interesting, but
this bird just has me so insanely confused. Fortunately, I got quite a few
decent pictures, but I would appreciate a little help. Please.
Here's the link to my pictures on Flickr if anyone wants to see them, or
use them to help ID:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/143139614@N05/albums/72157689928120672
--
-Megan Cash
Newberg, OR
