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Would you tick this Wigeon?

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Imagine my suprise yesterday lunchtime...

The tide was rising and leaving me few options on the foreshore for gullage etc.  I headed for Wandsworth Park.  I thought I might amuse myself by getting some gull ID's wrong.  No such time for that as I looked over the fence to the river and saw the top of a Wigeon.  Get in!  Patch tick!  I then took in the rest of the waterfowl on the river and noticed that there were two Wood Ducks there too.  Oh, that's really strange thought I.  And there was a female too.  Okay....

Unfortunately the Wigeon seemed to be quite friendly with the Wood Ducks.  So much so that when the Wigeon swam off, the Wood Ducks followed him.  And when they all got together again closer to the barges, the Wigeon seemed to be courting the female Wood Duck.  Drat. 

Getting out Occam's Razor again (sorry) I am left with the following conclusion.  3 non-tickable, probably escaped, ducks are following a duck that is known to be kept in captivity.  This duck is cavorting with the female non-tickable duck. 

The Wigeon is an escape.  Guilty by association.  And thenceforthly is not a patch tick.

Gutted.


Four ducks doing plastic.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Here is a bit of (warped) logic to be Satan's Lawyer:-

In Germany Wood Duck is naturalised and can be ticked. If a naturalised Wood Duck from Germany comes here, can't we tick a tickable bird? (Get Bar-headed Goose on your list using the same loophole - they breed ferally in Sweden).

P.S. Only kidding - I'm not that bad (no, you can't see my list!)

Steve Gale said...

Maybe the Wood Ducks are themselves wild (forget about the recent easterly/northerly wind bias, it was westerly some months ago), therefore the Wigeon might be wild as well. Result - patch tick!

Gavin Haig said...

As in the human world, it has been well documented that birds can be cerebrally challenged to a phenomenal degree. Extremely thick Wigeon are invariably sent on spoof errands by their clan, get hopelessly lost, and will then ALWAYS seek out the gaudiest possible floating buddies. Tick without flinching.

Razboynik said...

A bird is a bird is a bird.
Isn't it?

Des McKenzie said...

The Wigeon is fully-winged. Patchlist it.

Not an unusual species on the Thames (even if it is on that stretch) - London Wetland Centre is but a short flight away and they are presently holding about 30.

Be keen on hearing if the Wood Ducks are fully-winged should you see them again; as you know NM had a pinioned Mandarin Duck on the Thames not far from you recently - and then there was the recent report of the six Ferruginous Ducks at Chiswick; assuming the ID of the latter was correct, and even if it wasn't, it looks as though someone is either releasing thse onto the Thames somewhere or they've waddled from some 'ornamental pond' adjoining the Thames, probably further west.

Ernest said...

Are you sure they aren't Hawfinches?

col said...

tick the wigeon - its ok, don't feel bad about it - after all those hours of patch grafting, you deserve it! Prob pushing it a bit to be tryin to have the wood ducks too, but you could always pencil them in, just in case!

Mark Fellowes said...

Yup - I'd tick it - there's a lot more wild ones than escapes around so chances are... Anyway, where do we draw the line - mandarin OK, wood duck not seems a bit pernickity to me. Both breed where I work and I saw a confused wood duck X mandarin hybrid last week. I feel if they breed here without intervention, they get ticked. Probably not the done thing, but I don't care - it's my list and I'll tick if I want to. Then again, my list's completely rubbish anyway, which probably explains a lot ;-)

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