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Anas platyrhynchos domestica,
Large, white female duck paired with a male Mallard. Aggressive towards other ducks except her mate.
Park
Spotted on Jun 4, 2012
Submitted on Jun 4, 2012
3 Comments
Yes being Long Island is known for the large white duck statue, I guess they release white ducks onto parks such as this one. I dont recall ever seeing a hybrid of the 2 only pairs of them with wild ducks.
This is most likely a domestic variety or a hybrid with the Mallard. Most domesticated ducks are descended from Mallards so they can interbreed, unfortunately. Many people release unwanted ducks (think Easter time with the ducklings and chicks and baby rabbits) to the "wild" where they very often die or dilute wild populations of ducks. Sometimes they escape from farms. They are often found in parks where the birds are fed by people.
It looks like a Pekin Duck. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pekin_duck
https://www.google.com/search?q=pekin+du...
Jumbo Pekin on the left, Anas platyrhynchos domesticus, and Mallard on the right, Anas platyrhynchos. On Long Island, many of the domesticated ducks belong to various parks or neighborhood ponds. Feral birds survive perfectly well in urban areas, where people will feed them scraps. They definitely do tend to dilute wild Mallard populations, though.