lirralirra

Rotten photographs this week but a pretty remarkable story.

Can you see what I saw! This lovely family of Australian Wood Ducks, aka Maned Ducks, were just outside of my window. They sometimes nest in hollows in my trees but I’m not sure which nest these guys used. My grass is super long at the moment as the ground is more suitable for ducks than for my mower – it’s so wet I’d need a flag to stick in the earth to show where it had gone down.

I took some quick photographs with my phone then raced to get my camera as the ducklings were moving so quickly it was hard to count them.

I didn’t notice the ring-in until I was counting the ducklings through the long lens – there were eleven. The first thing I noticed was that one duckling was a fraction of the size of the others, then I realised it wasn’t a Wood Duck!

I’ve seen huge broods before, including one of 29 ducklings that I shared on lirralirra a while ago. Female Wood Ducks are known to sometimes lay eggs in a communal nest, but this is the first time I’ve photographed a different species included with the group.

Pacific Black Ducklings and Chestnut Teal Ducklings are very similar and I’m not 100% sure which species this is. I was leaning towards a blackie due to the colouring but had a nagging doubt that it could be a chestnut so I wrote to the Swamp Shepherd, (who has featured in previous posts) as he is a duck whisperer. He felt that the bill appears more Chestnut Teal-ish but isn’t 100 certain either. I checked my books, and googled, where the best images I found were from lirralirra, which was pretty hilarious, but still not conclusive.

I can only wonder how this little duckling found itself with a foster family. The wonders of nature.

Happy birding, Kim

• I’m not sure how well known ‘ring in or ring-in’ is outside of Australia and New Zealand so here’s a definition from dictionary.com: noun ring-in Australian informal a horse that serves as a substitute. Australian and NZ informal a person or thing that is not normally a member of a particular group; outsider.

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