Dan --

The black duck looked very much like the drawings in both the National
Geographic and Peterson's Western Birds guides: it was no larger than any
of the accompanying mallards as I'd expect of a mallard/domestic mix,
it's beak was a greenish-yellow with vague black markings as indicated
for female black ducks, and the dark body color and lighter head and
neck and head markings all corresponded very closely with the drawings
and written descriptions. It was swimming around in a narrow lagoon very
close to me, affording ample opportunity to examine (and photograph) it.
I'm fairly confident that it was a black duck.

As to the "yellow-shafted" flickers: they had the red spots on the backs
of their heads... I don't have my field guide with me right now, but I
seem to remember that that was the yellow-shafted head pattern. I could
be wrong...

Katie Sauter
sauter at u.washington.edu

On Mon, 21 Nov 1994, Don Baccus wrote:

> Here in Portland, the occasional flicker with yellow shafts is the
> gilded flicker (yellow shafts, but red-shafted head pattern).
>
> Are you sure your "black duck" isn't a mallard/domestic mish-mash?
>
> -Don Baccus-
>
>
>