Putangitangi pair (female in foreground) - Paradise shelduck - Tadorna variegata

Steve Attwood
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Putangitangi pair (female in foreground) - Paradise shelduck - Tadorna variegata
Putangitangi pair (female in foreground) - Paradise shelduck - Tadorna variegata

Photographed at Travis Wetland, Christchurch.
"Parries" are one of my favourite New Zealand ducks, in spite of being a bit of a pest sometimes when you are trying to photograph more shy wetland birds. The parries are brilliant watchdogs and will sound an alarm long before the other birds have noticed your approach, setting the whole wetland on alert! The white-headed females are especially attractive when in their breeding plumage.

The paradise shelduck is a colourful, conspicuous and noisy waterfowl that could be mistaken for a small goose. It has undergone a remarkable increase in population and distribution since about 1990, including the colonisation of sports fields and other open grassed areas within urban environments. This expansion has occurred in the face of being a gamebird and hunted annually.

The paradise shelduck is a conspicuous and colourful species with contrasting male and female plumages. Between a large duck and a small goose in size, the male is uniformly dark grey or black while the female body is a dark or light chestnut (depending on age and state of moult). The male’s head is black with occasional green iridescence and the female’s head and upper neck is white. Both sexes have a chestnut undertail, black primary wing feathers, green secondary wing feathers and a conspicuously white upper wing surface. Variable amounts of white may occur on the heads of males during the eclipse moult (February-May) and newly-fledged juvenile females may retain an extensive black head with a white face patch until they complete their post-juvenal moult (by May).The bill, legs and feet are dark grey/black. Down-covered ducklings appear initially as “mint humbugs”, patterned brown-and-white. The first feathers are dark, and near-fledged ducklings of both sexes resemble the adult male - www.nzbirdsonline.org.nz

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Taken on: July 20, 2014
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Sets appears in:   • Travis Wetlands Christchurch    • Putangitangi - Paradise shelduck - Tadorna variegata   
Camera: Canon EOS 7D, 1/500 sec, 400mm, ISO 800 (more info) (hide info)
Camera: Canon EOS 7D
Exposure Time: 0.002 sec (1/500)
Focal Length: 400mm
ISO: 800
Exposure Bias: +1/3 EV
Flash: Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program: Program AE
Metering Mode: Center-weighted average
Color Space: Uncalibrated
Software: QuickTime 7.7.3
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