Moulting Mallard on the River Slea
Introduction
The photograph on this page of Moulting Mallard on the River Slea by Mick Lobb as part of the Geograph project.
The Geograph project started in 2005 with the aim of publishing, organising and preserving representative images for every square kilometre of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man.
There are currently over 7.5m images from over 14,400 individuals and you can help contribute to the project by visiting https://www.geograph.org.uk
Moulting Mallard on the River Slea
Image: © Mick Lobb Taken: 2 Sep 2015
Mallards are highly aggressive breeders and cases involving hybridisation with closely related species are common. Waterfowl are particularly noted as interbreeders with Mallards being recorded as interbreeding with almost fifty other species of duck. Hybridisation can potentially lead to the extinction of a species as a result of introgressive gene flow resulting from hybrid offspring breeding with parent species. Fears were raised in Europe in relation to the interbreeding of the Ruddy Duck, an American species that had escaped from collections, and the similar European White-headed Duck. This resulted in a cull of the Ruddy Duck. This bird shows a varied plumage between the stages of its autumn moult and it would be interesting to discover if this is a pure bred bird among the large mixed flock here or another hybrid.
Images are licensed for reuse under creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0
Image Location
Latitude
52.998371
Longitude
-0.405323