{"id":1003001,"date":"2010-01-24T14:00:32","date_gmt":"2010-01-24T19:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/?p=1003001"},"modified":"2010-01-24T14:00:48","modified_gmt":"2010-01-24T19:00:48","slug":"hybrid-mallardnorthern-shoveler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/birding\/2010\/01\/24\/hybrid-mallardnorthern-shoveler\/","title":{"rendered":"Hybrid Mallard\/Northern Shoveler?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s a weird duck I found in Prospect Park this morning while looking for Friday’s Australasian Shoveler<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"Male
\n<\/p>\n

At first it had its head tucked in, and I thought it was a Northern Shoveler, but when it swam away the head and bill were clearly Mallard like. Probably can’t be sure without a blood sample, but it looks to me like a Mallard x Northern Shoveler. I’m not sure if this is a known (or even possible) combination<\/a>. Or it could be a hybrid with some other species. Mallards regularly hybridize with almost anything vaguely duck-like<\/a>. It could also be an escapee exotic from some distant land like the Australasian Shoveler. Just yesterday I miscalled a Cape Shelduck as an immature Black-bellied Whistling Duck. Or it could be a full-blooded drake Mallard with aberrant plumage.<\/p>\n

Anyone ever seen a bird like this before? For that matter, is there a good reference that covers all the world’s waterfowl? As Sibley writes, “virtually any of the world’s waterfowl species can occasionally be seen free-flying in North America.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s a weird duck I found in Prospect Park this morning while looking for Friday’s Australasian Shoveler:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[243,153,245,247,248,246],"class_list":["post-1003001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birding","tag-ducks","tag-exotics","tag-hybrids","tag-mallard","tag-northern-shoveler","tag-prospect-pa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1003001"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1003005,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003001\/revisions\/1003005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1003001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1003001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1003001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}