Birding in BC Community

At Brydon Lagoon in Langley last weekend I saw my first ducklings of the season. Mom was a Mallard with 6 little ones, while one little one was the typical Mallard patterning the other 5 were all yellow with a black stripe on their head. I spent some time on the internet couldn't find much on duckling descriptions. Wondering if these are in fact Mallard ducklings? If not what are they?

Mallard - 094A3991c1c by Sue Coastal Observer, on Flickr

Mallard - 094A3943a2c by Sue Coastal Observer, on Flickr

Looks like American Wigeon chicks, maybe the female Mallard picked up the Wigeon chicks or the chicks are hybrids as that happens often!

The other theory is a lot of mallards have some genes from domestic ducks in them due to farmyard escapes over the years diluting the gene pool.

Possibly be a genetic throwback of a domestic duck.

Many ducks adopt other species chicks that hang with the new mother.

Thanks Rob, I'll try to stop in to Brydon every now and then and update this thread. Not many of the ducklings seem to survive at Brydon though, hoping to see some of them grow up.

I went to Brydon today (first time) and there were two Mallard families with yellow ducklings. One is the brood of 6 you observed, the other was a brood of 4 with one yellow duckling. I couldn't get a clear view of this family while the brood of 6 came close by at one point.

I think maybe the parents carried a leucistic allele. The mother seems slightly different from mallards I usually see - a bit more yellow around the face and maybe slightly more stockily built (the latter I am not sure of since it can vary a lot with posture)

Here's some photos from Tuesday (May 9)











I only managed to get one shot of the other family. They were far away and I didn't see them again. (ducklings seem to hide a lot more than some other places I've been like Green Timbers)