A pair of Pacific black ducks seen wallowing in a puddle on the Parliament Lawns may well have been there on official business. Inside the sandstone building MPs were in debate about rowdy and aggressive ducks causing havoc.
Not just any old ducks. The debate centred on mallards originally introduced from Britain, or at least their cross-bred feral descendants, throwing their weight around.
To cries of “lame ducks”, the issue was raised by the representative of the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party, Carlo Di Falco.
Mr Di Falco complained to the Primary Industries and Water Minister Gavin Pearce that the inter-breeding between the mallards and Pacific black ducks was producing a hybrid species, inheriting the gene that made mallards more aggressive.
“They are different to all other ducks, their reaction to contact is different to other ducks and they are causing mayhem in the wild duck population,” he said.
Tasmania’s has 11 duck species but the mallard is only capable of breeding with the closely related native black ducks. It’s a duck we all know from city parks, with yellow stripes on its head and a warm brown plumage, with iridescent azure feathers in its wings.
But as the Pacific Black Duck Conservation Group points out domestic mallards are being released in the wild and when these two species come together the mallard strain is dominant. In successive generations the characteristics of our native species is lost. Hybrids are already showing up in Tasmania and there are fears that the native ducks might follow the sub-species in New Zealand – called the grey duck there – which has been almost totally subsumed by the feral population.
Mallards are the ancestors of all domestic ducks, except the Muscovy which does not breed with black ducks. The mallard – largely identified by the male’s iridescent green head and neck – is found across North America and Eurasia and is believed to have been domesticated in China two thousands years ago.
The conservation group has issued a booklet, Ducks in Tasmania, with illustrations showing how to spot hybrid populations, with the main difference being the colour of the legs – red in hybrids and brown in pure-bred black ducks. The native ducks have greyish-blue bills as opposed to red, pink and even green in the introduced species, which also have darker heads.
The minister said the government was monitoring the feral duck population, and urged people who keep domestic ducks not to let them escape into the wild population. He also said feral ducks were often being dumped in parks.
No dumping yet on the parliament lawns, where the pure-blood ducks have found a happy haven at night from the feral bully boys.
* Along with state government action, feral duck sightings can be reported to the conservation group, at pacificblackduck@gmail.com for their database. The booklet can also be obtained from this address.