BLACK DUCKS?

[WOODIE13]

Couple black ducks (male and female), but the speculum doesn't look quite right, blue v. purple.

May be a black/mallard hybrid, usually see quite a few here (WV) during the season.

Pic was with a cell phone at 25 yards...time to break out the white decoys

 

[georgia_home]

i do hope there is no speculum involved with those ducks. Their color palate, or SPECTRUM, doesnt look off, but it’s been nearly 35 years since I last saw/shot a black duck.

Couple black ducks (male and female), but the speculum doesn't look quite right, blue v. purple.

May be a black/mallard hybrid, usually see quite a few here (WV) during the season.

Pic was with a cell phone at 25 yards...time to break out the white decoysView attachment 1097203

 

[WOODIE13]

Might be the lighting, but black ducks have purple

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/American_Black_Duck/id

 

[across the river]

Might be the lighting, but black ducks have purple

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/American_Black_Duck/id

Pure blacks don't have white on the speculum or orange bills either.

 

[WOODIE13]

Very true. The drake didn't have any.

Tough to find anymore without some white

 

[WOODIE13]

The science on "hybrids" is coming into better clarity or at least now in question. What we once thought were hybrids may actually just be residual mallard DNA from before the two species split during the last ice age.

https://www.utep.edu/newsfeed/campu...coveries-related-to-north-american-ducks.html

 

[LIB MR ducks]

i do hope there is no speculum involved with those ducks. Their color palate, or SPECTRUM, doesnt look off, but it’s been nearly 35 years since I last saw/shot a black duck.

Actually it is called the speculum. Straight off the USFWS website:

The speculum, or colored wing patch, Is generally irrldescent and bright, and often a telltale field mark.

 

[mallardsx2]

No telling how many of those I killed over the years on the Susquehanna river.