Interspecific Dating

It's hard taking pictures of birds, particularly when you're not very good at it. But sometimes things align so perfectly that you're able to come up with a shot of unbeatable illustrative power. In this instance, I was standing on a viewing platform in the Mystic (really, a disguised outfall pipe, adjacent to the Route 38 bridge), when a small flotilla of mallards heaves into view. Only one of them is not quite a mallard; instead, it's what happens when a mallard dips into a dating pool not its own. Specifically, it seems to be a hybrid between a mallard and an American black duck. T

And a week earlier, I saw another hybrid  -- quite clearly a different duck (look at the difference in the bill and the patterning of the head). It's getting to be kind of a thing, apparently.