These fine crows had found a great place to bathe in Vienna’s Stadpark. I felt a bit like one of Susannah’s elders spying on them, but there’s something unusual about these birds: I have no idea what they are.

And neither, in a sense, do they.

Lower Austria’s breeding “black” crow is the handsome gray Hooded Crow, much like this one facing off with a European Red Squirrel in the Schönbrunn gardens last week.

Come winter, though, all identification bets are off. Carrion Crow genes course through the blood of many, perhaps of most, of the thousands of non-Rook, non-Jackdaw Corvus roosting and feeding in the city, producing some handsome combinations of plumages.

Dark birds like this one might pass for a Carrion Crow on casual inspection, but the gray thighs and nape gave it away as a hybrid or intergrade; its exact heritage is likely very complex, full of the crosses and backcrosses typical of these birds in Mitteleuropa.

Many superficially Hooded Crows also showed clear signs of mixed ancestry, with extra black appearing most frequently on the mantle and lesser coverts.

With so many of these Hoodarrion Crows around, the suspicion is unavoidable that even visually “pure” birds aren’t. But–and this is the important point–who cares? We’re stuck enjoying what’s out there, and if it’s crows with fascinatingly muddy bloodlines, so much the better.

Alison and I saw lots of birds, including two Hudsonian Godwits and five Snow Buntings; wonder whether they knew each other from back home in the Arctic!

As expected on a chilly November day, waterfowl were abundant. Most of the thousands of ducks out on the big pools were Northern Pintail and American Black Ducks, but looking close turned up another dozen anatid species–and plenty of birds like these.

The bird on the right here looks black-duck-ish enough, but not so the pair in front of him. To call them “hybrids” would be to oversimplify things: who can tell how many mixed pairs of mallard-like ducks are in their family tree?

Especially the drake was a very handsome bird, all chocolate brown with a beautiful bronzy nape and that elegant little duck tail.

If you’re lucky enough to see American Black Ducks with any frequency, keep an eye out; it’s the rare flock that doesn’t include at least a few of these obvious introgressants.

The “no” votes acknowledge that Mexican Duck may indeed be more closely related to the Mottled Ducks and to American Black Duck than to the good ol’ greenhead, but the major obstacle to recognition at the species level seems to be the frequency of hybridization and introgression between the two.

Not, of course, that Northern Mallards won’t breed with anything feathered they can outswim. McCarthy quotes C.L. Sibley as saying that “in a mixed collection of waterfowl the Mallard is an unmitigated nuisance because of the amorousness of the males,” then goes on to list something like 60 documented hybrids involving that species.

One of the commonest and best-known combinations is that with American Black Duck, probably not much less frequent than mixes with Mexican Duck.

This male was in Mercer Co., New Jersey, a couple of autumns ago; his eye is obviously on creating a little more genetic complexity with that Mallard hen.

In any event, the AOU committee’s endorsement of the taxonomic status quo seems to reflect not just a dissatisfaction with the evidence, but perhaps–to push the point a little–the lack of a species concept that can accommodate things like mallards and juncos and fox sparrows and big gulls. Biological reality is messy, and we may have to give up the notion of the species entirely if we’re to figure out how to describe it. Seems to me like we’ve known that since about 1859, but old habits of thought die hard!

It’s hard in the colder half of the year not to see flocks of American Wigeon around Vancouver. And dumpy little ponds like this one, surrounded by lawn and houses and Saturday morning joggers, seem to be their preferred habitat.

A quick scan of a flock this large is almost guaranteed to turn up a Eurasian Wigeon or two. And sure enough, one of the first birds Alison and I saw when we pulled up to Centennial Beach yesterday morning was a nice gray drake with a nice red head.

But was it really a Eurasian Wigeon?

Like all ducks, the wigeon are given to miscegenation, and every one of the three species–American, Eurasian, and Chiloe–has hybridized with each of the others, not to mention with virtually every other species of puddle duck.

The Centennial Beach bird struck us as a candidate for such a hybrid or back-cross.

There was a definite pinkish tone to the sides, and the head color was decidedly dull, with a noticeably “faded” effect to the cheek beneath the eye; the eye patch was also very conspicuous. From certain angles, I think I could see a faint, incomplete black line at the base of the bill. The wing coverts seemed to be entirely bright white, eliminating the possibility that we were dealing with just a smudgy first-cycle male.

Hybrid wigeon are over-reported in North America; too many birders see a green eye patch or a blurry flank or a dull forehead blaze and immediately assume that it couldn’t be a “pure” Eurasian–an assumption they’d be less eager to make after a few hours with a flock of Eurasians in the Old World. This time, though, I’m willing to believe that there may well be some American blood coursing through these veins.

What do you think?

Is there anything more glorious than a wild Mallard drake in his basic (=breeding =winter =bright =fancy) plumage? And the hens, though more muted, are every bit as beautiful, too.

In a way, it’s too bad that this species is so incredibly abundant and so familiar to most of us. It’s sometimes just too easy to look right past Mallards in our search for something “better,” and we wind up ignoring some things–like the bright blue secondaries–that would take our breath away in a bird less common and less quotidian.

Watching Mallards is, in fact, one of the most exciting ways a birder can spend her time: not only are they pretty, but they’re given to shamelessness in most of their behaviors, letting human eyes behold all sorts of avian activities usually conducted in private. Preening, bathing, feeding, and every stage of courtship from soup to nuts: all out on display.

It gets even better. While we often think of a big flock as just the backdrop to the star rarities we’re looking for, large congregations of Mallards are in fact anything but monolithic. Even when the search turns up no vagrants–and statistically speaking, that’s going to be most of the time–there’s almost always a “different” bird among the Mallards themselves, a hybrid or an intergrade or, heaven help us, a barnyard duck.

As the English name “Mallard” suggests, these ducks are nothing if not promiscuous, and in the heat of the moment, drakes will mate with anything with feathers. The most commonly observed hybrids are, as one might expect, those with closely related taxa such as American Black Duck (above, in New Jersey) or Mexican Duck (below, in Arizona).

Sometimes things get really out of hand, and the result can be something like this, a Mallard x Northern Pintail hybrid in British Columbia.

More frequently we run across birds that don’t really fit any of the categories of thought we birders work within. And that’s because they aren’t really “wild” in the sense of the field guides. Mallards have been domesticated for thousands of years, and their sense of adventure means that such birds–bred for meat, for eggs, for ornament and companionship–regularly escape to join their wild cousins on lakes and ponds. And many populations of “feral” Mallards receive a regular infusion of new blood every Easter Monday, when it is discovered that ducklings possess not just adorability but digestive tracts.

Many of these birds–lately, it seems, described with the none too delicate adjective “manky,” a nicely alliterative coinage by Charlie Moores–are immediately recognizable as Mallards of a sort.

This very pretty bird, for example, might be mistaken for a genuine wild Mallard at a glance–he’s even got the species’ trademark “ducktail,” a feature retained in most domestic Mallard drakes–but the head shape is strange, and the plumage is oddly yellowish throughout. Somewhere in this bird’s pedigree we’re almost certain to find a domestic forebear of the breed known, aptly, as Buff.

Other individuals can lead to confusion. I’ve heard birders seriously weigh the possibility that a white-bibbed Mallard–a feature conspicuous in several domestic breeds–was in fact an eider.

And call ducks, the tiniest and cutest breed of domestic Mallard going, are continually misidentified as leucistic wigeon, thanks to their short necks, round heads, and diminutive bills.

There are dozens of domestic breeds of Mallard that can be seen “in the wild,” from bizarre runners

to equally weird crested ducks.

What they all have in common is that they’re Mallards–just like a cocker spaniel or a Labradoodle is a dog, just like an American beauty is a rose. It’s pretty amazing what a few millennia of selective breeding can do!

Check 10000 Birds for a growing gallery of domestic and just plain bizarre Mallards.

There was a lot to see, but we tarried over what we at first thought was a female Northern Cardinal. Closer inspection, though, revealed that she had no black on the face at all, and that the right lore (but not, interestinglyenough, the left) had a few scattered reddish feathers. The bill was the usual bright orange of a Northern Cardinal, but was decidedly shorter with an abruptly curving culmen–still significantly longer and straighter than in a Pyrrhuloxia.

The bird was keeping company with a pair of Pyrrhuloxias, a circumstance that itself says nothing about her possible parentage (the two desert cardinal species are frequently seen together here in Arizona). She eventually flew across the path in front of us, chipping with a note that seemed to me not out of the range of vocal variation of either species, and disappeared into the vegetation. No photos, but if you happen to be walking north on the Santa Cruz, keep an eye out for what may well be the representative of an apparently rare, and certainly rarely detected, hybrid combination.

It was chilly and sprinkly (and dark!) when we started shortly before 8:00, but the weather just got better and better as the day wore on, as you can see in those funny blue spaces–oh yeah, the sky!–in the photo of one of our two Pileated Woodpeckers.

We spent the morning right along the river, birding a narrow strip of parkland between the Fraser and the encroaching “industrial parks” (a real contradictio in adjecto, as Mike pointed out).

The landscape wasn’t all that appealing for most of the stretch, but the birding was good. Golden-crowned Kinglets and Pacific Wrens were with us always, and a lingering Hermit Thrush was a nice sight. Hairy Woodpecker is a species I rarely see in Vancouver for some reason, and the wonderful looks at a black-winged female feeding, uncharacteristically, on the ground, probably made that species “bird of the day” for me.

Bird of the day from the perspective of the count was a male American Kestrel on a wire at the “swinging bridge,” a great massive structure that pivots to let tugboats and barges pass up and down the river. Sadly, kestrels are rare to the point of vanishing in the Vancouver area, and the sight of that little falcon pumping his tail on the line, still so familiar in the midwest and southwest, was a novelty for us today.

It wasn’t all urban wasteland. After lunch with Brian, Janice, and Mary, we set off uphill to bird “the ravines,” a series of beautifully forested canyons cutting  down through Burnaby’s south slope to the floodplain.

It was here that we found our two big woodpeckers and Alison picked up the day’s only Varied Thrushes; the Pacific coast forest in the afternoon isn’t exactly the birdiest place in the world, but the scenery was well worth the walk, especially considering how hyper-developed the surroundings.

We ended the day in Burnaby’s Central Park, a wonderful revelation in the late afternoon sunshine.

While Alison walked Gellert (he’d been very patient in the car all day), Mike and I watched the Sunday afternoon park-goers feeding Black-capped and Chestnut-backed Chickadees from the hand, and sorted through the 166 (I counted ‘em) Glaucous-winged-type Gulls to find a slightly darkish Western x Glaucous-winged Gull hybrid (or introgressant).

It's really not that good, is it? But it was the darkest bird we had good looks at all day.

We also found a single Thayer’s Gull, a pretty adult.

And that was the last new species for us on a wonderful day afield. Tomorrow to the Kootenays!

After these past several field trips in the rain, my Nature Vancouver group and I almost felt like we deserved today: look at that sky! It wasn’t warm, barely above freezing most of the day, but irresistibly beautiful all the same at Vanier Park and on the shores of English Bay.

As you might expect in Vancouver in December, our morning’s list was heavily weighted towards waterfowl. Of our 36 species, fully fifteen and a half were anatids, among them some local specialties. The little pond at Vanier Park produced the expected Eurasian Wigeon; there was general agreement that this male rather outshines the females we’d been watching on the last couple of trips to Jericho!

The Canada Goose flock, a bit standoffish of late, finally stood still to let us scan it; the results included two other species of goose, a single juvenile Snow Goose and this lovely minima Cackling Goose.

And the rarest bird of the day was the reliable little Bucephala hybrid, bobbing and diving more or less on his own in the vicinity of the Surf and White-winged Scoters.

But the interesting sighitng of the morning was provided by a common anatid, Northern Shoveler. Peter discovered two on the pond, swimming circles around each other in the classic shoveler “pinwheel.”

Click for a dizzying video.

Both birds were brown, but one–the right-hand bird in the photo above–showed a solid black bill and a yellow eye, sexing it a male; closer inspection revealed a decided ruddy tone to many feathers of the flank.

The molts of Northern Shoveler remain something of a mystery, but this is apparently a first-cycle male at the very dullest extreme, easily overlooked in a first scan, but a real eye-opener if you pause to look close.

Today’s destinations, of course, were exceptionally motivating: the giant bird feeder that is Reifel Refuge and the jetty at the Tsawwassen ferry.

We spent an hour wandering the roads of Westham Island, picking up a first-winter Northern Shrike, a single Eurasian Collared-Dove, and a beautiful Slate-colored Junco at Vari’s feeders. The swan flock I’d been keeping up my sleeve as an unfailing backup was g-o-n-e, but after the flocks of Trumpeter Swans we’d been seeing the days before, it was easy to forgive them (we did have four pass overhead at Reifel later in the morning).

Reifel, as always, was crazy. Nowhere else can you get so incredibly, so intimidatingly close to Sandhill Cranes, and the emberizids scattered on the paths are just as impressive. After struggling sometimes to get the whole group on furtive Sooty Fox Sparrows these past days, it’s tremendous to have multiple individuals gobbling food right out in the open on the paths–usually just next to a Song Sparrow or two for convenient comparison.

A propos de Song Sparrow, we had at least one relatively pale, finely marked, cold-toned individual today, obviously different from the usual dark red subspecieses here in the winter. I’ll try to figure it out.

Reifel is most famous for the waterfowl show, and if anything, today’s was even better than usual, with birds crowded out of the iced-over ponds and concentrated on the open water. The Snow Geese were offshore, a noisy, glistening flock of 3,000 (not sure where the others were!). All of the usual shallow-water species were in good numbers on the open ponds, among them a very handsome surprise.

This beast was floating among Mallards and Northern Pintails, and no doubt felt quite at home with either and both. This is a common and well-known hybrid combination, but today was the first time I’d ever seen it in the wild, and this bird is a beauty. Bill, head shape, neck pattern, tail, and wing are all very strongly pintail-like, but the black rump and broad, silvery tertials obviously the product of mallard influence. Like most of the dabblers at Reifel, it is already very tame, giving great close-up views.

But that wasn’t the end of today’s funny ducks. Among the many thousands of waterfowl at the Tsawwassen jetty, a tiny white bird stood out: another male goldeneye x bufflehead hybrid. Too distant for photos, but a very striking and strikingly odd bird, somewhat whiter-headed than the one hanging out here in Kitsilano. With no black on the breast sides and only a few longitudinal streaks visible in the wing coverts, this is probably a Common Goldeneye x Bufflehead hybrid, though it’s impossible to rule anything out when these anatids get to miscegenatin’.

I’d gone 35 years without ever seeing such a bird, and now here in Vancouver, I’ve seen three different individuals in eleven months. Odd place, the west coast!

A stormy night in Vancouver ceded to a sunny but still terrifically windy morning, and the gale didn’t much help our birding on my Nature Vancouver field trip to Kitsilano Point and Vanier Park. We made do, though, and I think we all enjoyed the great looks at Cackling Goose, Eurasian Wigeon, and Cassiar Junco.

On my way home, I paused on Kits Beach to scope the goldeneye flock. I was happy to find seven Common Goldeneyes among more than ten times that many Barrow’s–and the cute little white thing in the photo above.

A sharp-eyed observer discovered this funny duck last Thursday, and it appears–fingers firmly crossed–to have settled in for the winter. The first descriptions made me think that it would turn out to be a Hooded Merganser hybrid, but there’s little about it, now that I’ve seen it several times, to make me believe that there is any but Bucephala blood in its veins.

The size, bright white body, and flattish bill are pretty obviously those of a Bufflehead ancestor, I think, while the head pattern, with its clearly green gloss and that round spot at the bill base, can be accounted for by Common Goldeneye parentage. In the field, there is definitely a yellowish-pink tinge to the upper mandible, which can’t be explained by anything I can think of.

Weirdest of all is the shape of this bird’s head. If the patchy patterns can be explained as a mixture of goldeneye and bufflehead influence, I have no idea where the straight nape and odd little curly crest–sometimes obvious, sometimes not–could come from. Any suggestions?