Out on the stippled waters of the one of the reservoirs at the Waterworks Reserve something a little different stirred.
I could tell summer was making way for autumn because a seasonal traveller had arrived – a hardhead duck.
The male was still in its breeding plumage and in the soft early-morning sunlight it looked a treat. Chocolate head on a textured brown body, blue-black beak with a silver tip and a distinctive white eye, which gives the species its second name, white-eyed duck.
I had long been puzzled why the name hardhead was given to the duck and from the time I first saw hardheads about 20 years ago could never find an explanation.
The mystery is over now with the publication of Ducks of Tasmania, a booklet featuring Tasmania’s 11 native duck species and where to see them.
Among the “fun facts” that accompany pictures of the ducks and their natural history, I discovered I was wrong to assume the hardhead had a scull possibly thicker than other waterbirds, maybe on account of its diving to great depths to feed on aquatic plants, insects and crustaceans.
I know gannets have strengthened sculls to counter their plunges from great heights into the ocean to spear fish but how could the same apply to a duck that merely dives from the water’s surface?
According to Ducks of Tasmania, rather than having a dense skull, the name was given to the duck by taxidermists in the Victorian era, simply because they had a hard time fashioning the rounded head of the species.
Although the booklet has many such fun facts, the chief aim of the publication is to draw attention the plight of Tasmania’s most common species, the Pacific black duck.
It’s a duck we all know from city parks, with its striped head of yellow and black and its 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 these closely related species are breeding with the natives.
When these two species come together the mallard strain is dominant and in successive generations the characteristics of our native species is lost.
Hybrids are already showing up in Tasmania. The booklet has 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.
There is a call here to cull the hybrid ducks, to prevent a situation in New Zealand where its pure-bred black ducks – called the grey duck there – are now listed as rare.
Meantime conservationists are urging people not to dump pet ducks in park ponds and other waterways and for duck-lovers to refrain from feeding both domestic and native species.
To acquire the booklet, contact pacificblackduck@gmail.com