Mottled Duck (Anas cyanoptera)
The Mottled Duck is a large dabbling duck very similar in appearance to the Mallard hen and American Black Duck.
Identification
The Mottled Duck is a medium-large size duck. The sexes are nearly identical except that the female is slightly smaller. There is differential coloring of the adult bills and a differential chest/breast and neck pattern visible only when in hand. The body plummage is very dark, blackish brown. The body feathers are bordered by a buff brown. In contrast the head and neck are buff brown with fine dark blackish-brown streakings on the cheek and neck. Females never have streaking on the neck, whereas the drakes vary from no streaking to heavy streaking.
The Mottled Duck differs from the Mallard hen with darker plumage and a greener speculum with a black border opposed to the Mallard's white border. The feet are orange, and the bill is olive-yellowish. The drake and hen are almost identical with a slight differnce in the color of their bills. Drake bills are solid yellow, hens have a spotted yellow bill with olive-gray. Body plumage is dark brown and feathers are thinly edged with beige. The crown is dark and sides of the head and neck are beige or light brown. The top of the wings are dark brown with a dark purple speculum. The under wing is white with grayish colored tips. Legs are orange-red.
Habitat
Mottled Ducks breed and Winter along the Gulf Coast in the fresh and saltwater mashes. When you move inland from the coast and hit the woods, the mottled duck range stops. They are birds of the coastal marsh and prairie, and they are tied to that habitat. You lose that habitat and you lose mottled ducks. Unlike all other North American ducks, mottled ducks do not migrate, at least they don't migrate in the accepted tradition of north-to-south and back again. They move around a bit, east and west, but they don't ever leave the coastal plain.
Loss of prairie nesting habitat to urbanization and encroachment by tallow trees along with changes in farming practices, particularly the decline in acreage in rice production, has altered the mottled duck's habitat.
