DuckSouth.com

Guys,
I killed this duck this mornin, is this an eclipse drake or a transvestite?

[img][url="http://www.hunt101.com/?p=347818&c=525&z=1"][img]http://www.hunt101.com/img/347818.jpg[/img][/url]


[/img][url="http://www.hunt101.com/?p=347819&c=525&z=1"][/url]

That's what a mallard with bird flu looks like.

That's one of them upside down hanging ducks!

I would say it is a hybrid. The breast feathers that I can see below where the normal white ring is on the neck look a lot like Blue wing teal feathers. However I severely doubt a mallard X BWT cross, seems very unlikely due to size differences and also migration times. I would say it's a cross between something. Do you have any pictures where the duck is dry and no reflections from the sun so we can better see the feathers?

Nope, I thought these would turn out better than they did, so I didn't take any more. We didn't kill any mallard hens to compare it to, but it seemed to have a lot of the same characteristics as one.

last week i killed one that looked exactly like that out west....my summation was that it was an eclisped mallard....

the "chest" had the appearance of a mallard hen and the greenhead was almost dirty looking....

i guess it could be a hybrid as well.......on the fly, i called it an early mallard....gator

Green bill and all it is prolly a Blackduck n Mallet hybrid. Of course I'm partial to the Blackduck.

We shot several last year. Pat Pitt the Taxidermist in Olive Branch told me it was an old hen. So old that it was past its prime and producing lower levels of female hormone. Something like that. I said, " You think so?" He, in his I don't give a poo who you are type of way, said "I don't think so. I know so". "Yes sir, you the man," I says.

As was pointed out to me once, look at the white bars on the speculum. On the drake, the top white bar stops where the blue stops; on the hen, the top white bar extends well past the blue. It's a pretty good way to sex them.



Also look at the bill. It's drake colored yellow, not the orange of a hen.

I say it's a drake that hasn't fully molted into his breeding plumage, but I'm no biologist.

That is a Juvie Drake Mallard that has not gottten his full plumage. They are common expecially out of late broods.

I would bet that that duck is not any more than 4 months old. If that. We get them in that plummage alot in Dog Training.

I'd like to see a picture of it's breast. I don't know what juve mallards really looklike but those breast feather look like a grey/black/mottled duck. Kinda.

more than likely a duck that hadn't molted all the way...mallard drake...

Definitelyt an eclipse drake. That's teh one thing that has excited me most about this season is teh number of young birds being bagged.

I wouldn't rule out a simple genetic pigment deficiency. I've seen birds like thins killed late in the season, too. In regards to size/weight, how did it compare to the other mallards taken that day?

Juvi Drake Mallard.