seriously?!?! we had a male mallard who unfortunately didn’t survive this past winter, and he was labeled as a female. ive never seen a male mallard look so colorful before. thank you so much for helping!!
Did you get him as a juvenile or a young adult? Eclipse plumage looks like female feathers on drakes, they lose their breeding colours (the green head and white ring, etc) for a while after breeding season... Seems someone may have slipped you a drake disingenuously, passing him off as female through eclipse plumage if you didn't get him too long ago. If you did get him awhile ago, juvenile feathers can mask sex, he may just be maturing, the best way to tell sex in ducks besides the quack (drakes make a weird, froggy, raspy quack, not the honky "quack" we associate with ducks) is to look for the curly tail.
He is a little thick and fluffy looking for a mallard.
Someone else will definitely know his breed better than me.So i live around the corner from a farmers auction in NJ. And my bf and me have rescued animals from there before. “Rosie” was in a brown box labeled female. and it was in mid/late september of this year. He was definitely on the smaller side. The first picture was the first night i had him. And his feathers had a red tint (cant really see in the photo) which is why i called him Rosie. We came home that night with 4 ducks. 3 male Kahki Cambells and then rosie. he also had a huge “wound” on his back. which i later discovered was from stress. The farm he came from had 1,000+ ducks and they had to sell 700, to avoid a fine. Over the course of October i began to notice not only weight gain (good thing) but that he was changing colors. literally. And soon enough he became a whole different duck. He still thinks his name is Rosie so i have to reteach him his new name. And his quack was high pitched also when i first got him. Which also made me more confused once he got a green head.
