A sad day here at Intrigued. We had to say goodbye to one of our beloved toy Poodles. Osiris (Rizzi) lived a good long life, became a well decorated Agility Champion on Linda’s guidance and brought us tremendous joy over the years. Linda, his brothers and I truly miss him.
The stressometer is peaking again which means it is a good time to relax and get the mind focused on something else for a bit – translated, it is an absolutely great time to get another post out. Today’s featured feathered friend has what I’ve always considered an improper name.
Hit the jump to read about more about this badly named Duck.
Guessing many of you have already come upon this species already or remember if from one of my previous posts, but in the chance you are unfamiliar with it, here’s a quick question – “what would you name this Duck if you were the first person to discover it?” Purple-Headed Duck, Goldeneye (sorry, already taken), Grey-Bill, Black-Tipped-Bill or perhaps my recommendation, the Ring-Billed Duck. As a birder I ALWAYS appreciate it when the name matches up with a field identifiable feature. Maybe I need to petition the American Birding Association to see if they will let me simply rename all the birds based on this guiding principle – anyone with me?
Okay, obviously today’s featured Duck is not named any of those names .. not even the Ring-Billed Duck. Nope, instead they went with the Ring-Necked Duck because obviously the discoverer was on dope. For the record, I did try to find out the actual name of the idio.. sorry, person who provided the name but struck out. Turns out there are a lot of people that are upset about the crappy name, but no one was willing to name names – NAMES PEOPLE, we must have names to properly recognize the apparent blind. Hmmm, probably should dial that back a bit. Admittedly the alluded to feature does exist. There is a brownish ring that separates the neck from the body on this bird. You are going to have to dive into the water and catch one if you really want to see it – big glass will not even help you out on that. Fortunately you can easily see the white ring around the end of the grey bill. More importantly, you can see that ring even on the females per the shots above and below. Note, these specimens were found at Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge back in January 2017.
On a personal front, this bird happens to fall on my nemesis list. Not sure what it is with this species, but they pretty much own me. Every time I am lucky enough to come upon them, they almost immediately recognize my presence and take flight. Again (crappy shots here) and again (crappy shots here) and again – pretty much getting a complex over it as getting decent shots has been quite the struggle. Very happy with this set, but The Beast was at full extent and these shots are highly cropped. They look okay on the web, but nothing I’d go to print with (definitely better that the previous attempts). Will keep this Duck on my nemesis list until I am fortunate enough to get the pixel numbers up – that is really what makes birding fun after all – every outing is one more chance to improve on your previous shots.
Found this link when I was hunting for the person who named this Duck. Another person who holds my opinion on renaming this species – link here.
Goodbye old friend!
