fortunately Ive never seen anything like that in the millions of duck and geese Ive seen while fishing.
we was told not to feed them bread because they get to fat to fly and then the foxes have them
you live and learn

Tell me about it Brian. Somebody on the RSPB website said to me that if he cannot ID a duck, he calls it a Mallard,lol. Although when i asked somebody to ID the Gadwall he said that was a Mallard too, but even i could see it was not.....But like Mallards, Gadwalls can be hard to ID.....Look at this site : http://animalphotos.info/a/topics/an...birds/gadwall/

Yes i remember you saying Cakey. Last time i seen it was at the lake at Veralumium park in St Albans, very busy place for families with Kids, so birds most of the time get fed bread. But at least the person that runs the refreshment truck sells little bags of bird seed so that is one way to help prevent it. Happy to say the birds today looked very healthy

Very interesting array of species! The female duck at the bottom looks like a Mallard to me in that photo :/

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Thanks Laura

This is where i am getting really confused with all the mallards......
If you look at this website and go down to the image taken on 18th Nov 2008 of the Gadwall, its a spit of the one i took yesterday.....Well maybe a little different around the breast......And you are not the 1st person to say its a Mallard either......But at the same time the feathers are too light in color for it to be a normal mallard, and there is no blue tucked behind the wings as you usually see on female mallards......Totally confused here

http://animalphotos.info/a/topics/an...birds/gadwall/

Well it could be a Gadwall - but the beak looks rather yellow for that. The blue is not always obvious on the wing either. Ah well, it could be either!

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Just going to upload a front image of it, my thoughts are heading towards a Mallard now, looking at its breast

Would be very surprised if it's not a mallard

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Should take a look at the link i posted for the Manky Mallards Laura. And you wonder why i get confused,lol.

LOL! I think it's easier just to learn all the ducks you're likely to see, and if it doesn't look like one of those, it's probably a manky or an escape!

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