Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ginosko!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!apple!oliveb!oliven!mjm
From: mjm@oliven.olivetti.com (Michael Mammoser)
Newsgroups: rec.birds
Subject: Re: What is this bird??
Message-ID: <48550@oliveb.olivetti.com>
Date: 27 Sep 89 20:02:09 GMT
References: <3791@helios.ee.lbl.gov> <48214@oliveb.olivetti.com> <10774@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU>
Sender: news@oliveb.olivetti.com
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In article <10774@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU>, dmark@joey.cs.buffalo.edu (David Mark) writes:
 > 
 > am looking at a picture of the New Zealand race of the Australalian
 > Shoveler, Anas rhynchotis variegata, and except perhaps for the crown, your
 > description seems to fit it perfectly.  An escaped New Zealand Shoveller
 > in the Bay area would be very unlikely, but so would be a hybrid.  But then
 > again, hybrids are much more common in captivity, so maybe it was an
 > escaped hybrid...

	You are correct about the similarity between New Zealand Shoveler
and a Northern Shoveler x Blue-Winged Teal. An excerpt from Waterfowl: an
ID Guide reads: "Occasional wild hybrids between Northern Shoveler and 
Blue-Winged or Cinnamon Teals bear a remarkable resemblance to Australasian
Shovelers, but are smaller and of course likely to be met with only in
North America."

	However, there were some basic differences that led me to believe
that this bird was a hybrid. The head color of the New Zealand Shoveler is
a slate-gray, whereas my bird had the green head of a typical Northern
Shoveler. The marks along the breast and sides of New Zealand Shoveler are
small chevron-like marks, whereas my bird had small roundish spots like
a Blue-Winged Teal. The ground color of the sides and breast of the New
Zealand Shoveler is an orange/brown that continues from the sides onto the
lower breast and fades to whitish on the upper breast, whereas my bird had
a breast that was uniformly colored light brown/tan that suddenly changed
to orange/brown on the sides at the point where it normally changes to
this color on a typical Northern Shoveler.

	It is certainly helpful to have an ID guide to world birds of a
particular family when trying to identify an unusual looking species.
Based on the field mark differences stated above, I still believe that
the bird I saw was a hybrid, although I can't say whether it was wild or
an escaped captive.

Mike