Apparently it’s Duck Week. Reader Pete Moulton, spurred on by my misspelled mention of the “Fulvous Whistling-Duck“, has sent a lovely picture of one, alone with a short note:
Just in case no Texas reader has one to spare, I got your Fulvous Whistling-Duck (Dendrocygna bicolor) right here. This is a rare bird in my area, but one does turn up occasionally, as this one did in a city park pond in Scottsdale a few years ago.
Its range is very limited in the U.S. but it’s widespread elsewhere. Here’s a range map from the Americas from the Cornell site; there you can also hear its strange call.
Nice one, Pete!
…I’m guessing that’d have to be somewhere along the Scottsdale Wash…?
b&
Thanks, Ben! You’d be right, of course. This guy spent two winters at the lake in Chaparral Park. We looked for the usual signs of former captivity (bands, snipped hallux, web tags, etc.), but the bird displayed none of them, and the Arizona Bird Committee concluded that it was indeed a wild visitor. It never found another Fulvous at the lake, so in the end it took up with a Black-bellied Whistling-Duck, and for the next several months we’d see the odd couple at various places up and down the wash.
Poor guy! Lost in a strange land, all alone…but love will find a way!
…there’s a Disney screenplay in there, somewhere, I’m sure….
b&
Going through posts I missed, and glad I found this one!
What a gorgeous shot of the Fulvous! One of these days I will probably have to make a special trip just to bag this bird for my life-list.