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SPONSOR: DABBLE @ FANTASY FAIR EVENT - April 17 - May 4

North America's smallest dabbling duck are back for the winter. The males are just stunning, especially when they stand on a submerged log & pose in the sunlight.

Male Green-winged Teal (Anas carolinensis)

White Rock Lake, Dallas Texas

My photos can also be found at kapturedbykala.com

The last day of April 2025 and another trip to WWT Slimbridge in Gloucestershire.

A Gadwall flying over the outer fields at Slimbridge.

The Gadwall is a very grey-coloured dabbling duck, a little smaller than the Mallard, and with an obvious black rear end. It shows a white wing patch in flight. When seen close up the grey/brown colour is made up of exquisitely fine barring and speckling.

dabbling duck

“To dabble in green is not merely to tread a path between being and unbeing, but to make inroads into the mysteries of each. Simultaneously the colour of putrefaction and of verdurous regeneration, green participates with unbiased vividity in decay and rebirth.”

www.bbc.com/culture/story/20180709-the-colour-that-means-...

Near The Gulf Of Mexico

Naples, Florida

USA

The Muscovy duck (Cairina moschata) is a large duck native to Mexico, Central, and South America. Small wild and feral breeding populations have established themselves in the United States, particularly in Florida, Louisiana, and the lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas as well as in many other parts of North America, including southern Canada. Feral Muscovy ducks are found in New Zealand, Australia, and in parts of Europe.

They are large ducks, with the males about 76 cm (30 in) long and weighing up to 7 kg (15 lb). Females are considerably smaller, and only grow to 3 kg (6.6 lb), roughly half the males' size. The bird is predominantly black and white, with the back feathers being iridescent and glossy in males, while the females are drabber.

This non-migratory species normally inhabits forested swamps, lakes, streams and nearby grassland and farm crops, and often roosts in trees at night. The Muscovy duck's diet consists of plant material obtained by grazing or dabbling in shallow water, and small fish, amphibians, reptiles, crustaceans, insects, and millipedes. This is an aggressive duck; males often fight over food, territory or mates.

The Muscovy duck has benefited from nest boxes in Mexico but is somewhat uncommon in much of the east of its range due to excessive hunting. It is not considered a globally threatened species by the IUCN however, as it is widely distributed. – Wikipedia

The Philippine duck (Anas luzonica) is a large dabbling duck of the genus Anas. Its native name is papan. It is endemic to the Philippines.

It eats shrimp, fish, insects, and vegetation, and it frequents all types of wetlands.

Taxonomy

The Philippine duck is a dabbling duck and a member of the genus Anas. It has no subspecies and so it is monotypic. It belongs to the Pacific clade of Anas along with the koloa, the Laysan duck, the Pacific black duck, and the extinct Mariana mallard.

The scientific name comes from the Latin Anas, 'duck' and the Philippine island Luzon.

It is known in the Philippines as papan.

Description

The Philippine duck is a large conspicuous duck. It has a black crown, nape and eye stripe, with a cinnamon head and neck. The rest of its body is greyish brown with a bright green speculum. Its legs are greyish brown, and its bill is bluish-grey. The female is somewhat smaller than the male, but is otherwise the same.

Distribution and habitat

The Philippine duck is known to inhabit all of the major Philippine islands and 8 minor islands, but since the 1980s most sightings have been on Luzon and Mindanao. Long-distance vagrants have been sighted in Okinawa and Taiwan.

It is found in all types of wetlands within its range, but its preferred habitat is shallow freshwater marshland.

Conservation status

The Philippine duck is rated vulnerable on the IUCN Red List with the population estimated to be 3,300 - 6,700 mature individuals remaining. The species has experienced steep population decreases since the 1970s mainly due to hunting and habitat loss. The ducks have been heavily hunted since the 1960s with thousands being hunted a year through the late 1980s.

Habitat loss is mainly due to wetland drainage, aquaculture, mangrove destruction and fishpond creation.

The species occurs in multiple protected areas including Manleluag Spring Protected Landscape, Mounts Iglit-Baco National Park, Naujan Lake National Park, Bataan National Park, Northern Sierra Madre Natural Park and Olango Island, a Ramsar wetland. However, as is with most of the Philippines enforcement from hunting is lax.

This little grebe (Tachybaptus ruficollis), also known as dabchick was seen resting on the water surface.

Another trip to Slimbridge, Gloucestershire on the 15th November 2023. The water levels on the lagoons on the outer fields were still rising slowly.

A Eurasian Teal flying over the New Grounds at Slimbridge.

The Eurasian Teal, also known as the Teal or Common Teal, is the smallest dabbling duck in Europe.

The Eurasian Teal is similar to the Green Winged Teal which differs by having a vertical white stripe on the side of the breast and a much less defined white border around the green stripe on the face.

Many hundreds of Teal fly into Slimbridge to spend their Winter on the outer fields.

A pair of mallard drakes dabbling in the reflected green waters on a sunny day at the Maple River State Game Area

Also dabble in Microfig scale (1/72) helicopters so some of my old models getting some love. This one will come in UH-60 and SH-60 variants once I finalize some doors and attach points.

The Blue-winged Teal (Anas discors) is a small dabbling duck from North America.

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SPONSOR: Dabble @ WOW EVENT - March 28-31

The Red Shoveler, a dabbling duck, lives in shallow lakes and marshes throughout Southern America and the Falklands. The male has a pale head with a red and black spotted body and pale eye. The female is brownish-grey, similar head with brown eyes. Conservation status: Least concern with stable numbers but they are under threat from water pollution.

At the end of January 2025 I spent the morning at WWT Slimbridge, Gloucestershire.

The task for the morning was to get some images of Northern Shovelers in flight.

A male Northern Pintail on the Tack Piece Lagoon at Slimbridge.

Slightly bigger than a Mallard, these long-necked and small-headed ducks fly with curved back pointed wings and a tapering tail, making this the best way to distinguish them from other ducks in the UK.

The Northern Pintail is a dabbling duck that breeds in the northern areas of Europe, Asia and North America.

It is highly gregarious when not breeding forming large mixed flocks with other spicies of ducks.

The Northern Pintails hugh range and large population means that is it not threathened globally.

Arundel WWT

Amber listed dabbling duck

Another trip to Slimbridge, Gloucestershire on the 15th November 2023. The water levels on the lagoons on the outer fields were still rising slowly.

A Eurasian Teal on the Tack Piece Lagoon at Slimbridge.

The Eurasian Teal, also known as the Teal or Common Teal, is the smallest dabbling duck in Europe.

The Eurasian Teal is similar to the Green Winged Teal which differs by having a vertical white stripe on the side of the breast and a much less defined white border around the green stripe on the face.

Many hundreds of Teal fly into Slimbridge to spend their Winter on the outer fields.

Just a stunningly beautiful duck. The smallest teal, smallest dabbling duck in North America.

Male Green-winged Teal (Anas carolinensis)

White Rock Lake, Dallas

My photos can also be found at kapturedbykala.com

The Archives Revisited.

November 2006.

Another look back to 14 years ago and this time a 2nd trip back to Slimbridge in Gloucestershire.

The Eurasian Teal, also known as the Teal or Common Teal, is the smallest dabbling duck in Europe.

Images best viewed in "lights out" L key

For my video: youtu.be/0tzs7rScRx4,

Spanish Banks Beach, West Point Grey, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Styling and shopping with the Signature Geralt mesh body and head. See my blog for the deets: billybeaverhausen.com/2018/10/21/dabbling-with-geralt-ix/

Taken Yeadon Tarn

The mallard (/ˈmælɑːrd/ or /ˈmælərd/) or wild duck (Anas platyrhynchos) is a dabbling duck which breeds throughout the temperate and subtropical Americas, Europe, Asia, and North Africa, and has been introduced to New Zealand, Australia, Peru, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, the Falkland Islands and South Africa.[2] This duck belongs to the subfamily Anatinae of the waterfowl family Anatidae.

Male mallard, Sweden 2016

The male birds (drakes) have a glossy green head and are grey on wings and belly, while the females (hens or ducks) have mainly brown-speckled plumage. Both sexes have an area of white-bordered black speculum feathers which commonly also include iridescent blue feathers especially among males. Mallards live in wetlands, eat water plants and small animals, and are social animals preferring to congregate in groups or flocks of varying sizes. This species is the main ancestor of most breeds of domesticated ducks.[3]

Wikipedia

Dabbling in a little light paint

American Wigeons eat a higher proportion of plant matter than any other dabbling duck thanks to their short gooselike bill. The shortness of the bill helps exert more force at the tip so they can pluck vegetation from fields and lawns with ease.

Perhaps the most outwardly distinctive of the dabbling ducks, the Northern Shoveler inhabits wetlands across much of North America. Its elongated, spoon-shaped bill has comblike projections along its edges, which filter out food from the water.

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On a beautiful day, what else to do, other than sit, relax and pose for a photo shoot! This duck had the right attitude.

Pairs and small groups gather and dabble near submerged vegetation. One will often find Blue-winged Teal with other species of dabbling ducks. They are often around the edges of ponds under vegetation, choosing a concealed spot to forage or rest. Pairs and small groups of this tiny dabbling duck inhabit shallow ponds and wetlands across much of North America. Blue-winged Teal are long distance migrants, with some birds heading all the way to South America.

Taken with the 800mm Lens with a 1.4x extender. This bird became right at reach from the distance he was at.

Another trip to Slimbridge, Gloucestershire on the 15th November 2023. The water levels on the lagoons on the outer fields were still rising slowly.

A female Northern Pintail on the Tack Piece Lagoon.

Slightly bigger than a Mallard, these long-necked and small-headed ducks fly with curved back pointed wings and a tapering tail, making this the best way to distinguish them from other ducks in the UK.

The Northern Pintail is a dabbling duck that breeds in the northern areas of Europe, Asia and North America.

It is highly gregarious when not breeding forming large mixed flocks with other spicies of ducks.

The Northern Pintails hugh range and large population means that is it not threathened globally.

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SPONSOR: Dabble

The mallard is a dabbling duck that breeds throughout the temperate and subtropical Americas, Eurosiberia, and North Africa and has been introduced to New Zealand, Australia, Peru, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, the Falkland Islands, and South Africa. This duck belongs to the subfamily Anatinae of the waterfowl family Anatidae. The male birds have a glossy green head and are grey on their wings and belly, while the females have mainly brown-speckled plumage. Both sexes have an area of white-bordered black or iridescent blue feathers called a speculum on their wings; males especially tend to have blue speculum feathers. The mallard is 50–65 cm long, of which the body makes up around two-thirds the length. The wingspan is 81–98 cm and the bill is 4.4 to 6.1 cm long. It is often slightly heavier than most other dabbling ducks, weighing 0.72–1.58 kg. Mallards live in wetlands, eat water plants and small animals, and are social animals preferring to congregate in groups or flocks of varying sizes. This species is the main ancestor of most breeds of domesticated ducks.

Mallard chicks forming a line to dabble with their mom! About the best shot I could come up with where the chicks were more or less oriented the same way otherwise they were pointed to all the points on a compass!

I saw several families of mallards and wigeons at Potter Marsh recently, however this was the largest family with actually more than the seven chicks pictured here. What surprised me was how contentious the hens were towards each other, the mallard vs wigeon hens, at one point actually going after each other, all the while shepherding their chicks around to find food.

Taken 19 July 2018 at Potter Marsh, Anchorage, Alaska.

Trying flight shots with the

Canon EOS R

7Y2A0614_19-05-13-2

The Philippine duck (Anas luzonica) is a large dabbling duck of the genus Anas. Its native name is papan. It is endemic to the Philippines.

It eats shrimp, fish, insects, and vegetation, and it frequents all types of wetlands.

Taxonomy

The Philippine duck is a dabbling duck and a member of the genus Anas. It has no subspecies and so it is monotypic. It belongs to the Pacific clade of Anas along with the koloa, the Laysan duck, the Pacific black duck, and the extinct Mariana mallard.

The scientific name comes from the Latin Anas, 'duck' and the Philippine island Luzon.

It is known in the Philippines as papan.

Description

The Philippine duck is a large conspicuous duck. It has a black crown, nape and eye stripe, with a cinnamon head and neck. The rest of its body is greyish brown with a bright green speculum. Its legs are greyish brown, and its bill is bluish-grey. The female is somewhat smaller than the male, but is otherwise the same.

Distribution and habitat

The Philippine duck is known to inhabit all of the major Philippine islands and 8 minor islands, but since the 1980s most sightings have been on Luzon and Mindanao. Long-distance vagrants have been sighted in Okinawa and Taiwan.

It is found in all types of wetlands within its range, but its preferred habitat is shallow freshwater marshland.

Conservation status

The Philippine duck is rated vulnerable on the IUCN Red List with the population estimated to be 3,300 - 6,700 mature individuals remaining. The species has experienced steep population decreases since the 1970s mainly due to hunting and habitat loss. The ducks have been heavily hunted since the 1960s with thousands being hunted a year through the late 1980s.

Habitat loss is mainly due to wetland drainage, aquaculture, mangrove destruction and fishpond creation.

The species occurs in multiple protected areas including Manleluag Spring Protected Landscape, Mounts Iglit-Baco National Park, Naujan Lake National Park, Bataan National Park, Northern Sierra Madre Natural Park and Olango Island, a Ramsar wetland. However, as is with most of the Philippines enforcement from hunting is lax.

Gadwalls are dabbling ducks which means they eat food right under the surface of the water in a position that leaves only their butts showing above the water. Diving ducks dive to the bottom to get their food. Funny thing I just learned is that gadwalls will wait at the surface and steal the fish when a diving duck surfaces with a catch.

Female Gadwall (Anas strepera)

My photos can also be found at kapturedbykala.com

I dabble in researching my family tree on occasion. This is a photo of my great grandmother (centre). I have no idea who the other two ladies are. Anyone who would know have all passed away, sad.

Weekly Theme Challenge… FAMILY

dabbling in video...

This is a cross-view 3D image – a photographic niche I dabble in and it can be a very fun things to explore if you just cross your eyes! It’s also one of the “rabbit holes” I’ll be going down in my upcoming book: www.kickstarter.com/projects/donkom/macro-photography

If you’re unfamiliar with seeing 3D images by crossing your eyes, it’s simple: cross your eyes until you see three images – the center one is an overlap of the left and right and when you get a perfect overlap your vision will “lock on” and you can freely wander around the image. For those with a VR headset like Google Cardboard, a stereoscope or if you can view them “magic eye” style, here’s a side-by-side/parallel view version: donkom.ca/stereo/PDKP2236.jpg

There are some important challenges to consider when taking an image like this. When your eyes can freely navigate around a 3D image, your expect much of the scene to be sharp, with the depth of field extending to all parts of the subject. On a macro scale, this means incredibly small apertures, so small that you encounter diffraction that begins to limit the overall resolution. This image was shot with a special 3D macro lens with two lenses in the same barrel, so both images are taken at the same time with the same sensor – half the frame for the left eye, half the frame for the right eye.

This in-camera 3D effect can be seen by crossing your eyes and looking at the LCD screen on the back of the camera. Since light “flips” when it refracts to be upside down, our cameras always flip the image back around, meaning that the left-eye image is on the right side, and vice versa – allowing for cross-view to work right away so you can test the “depth” that the image possesses. This is important, because composing a stereoscopic image is not just a horizontal and vertical affair – the best images are designed around how much depth the scene or subject will have and it can be hard to fully realize it with two-dimensional thinking.

Still, shooting the two images at once, at this scale, requires a lot of light. Since this is a flower fluorescing under ultraviolet light, the requirements are immense. In the best case scenario, you need an overwhelming amount of UV light to make certain flowers glow. In this instance I used four of my custom-modified UV flashes at point-blank range, full power… with the camera set to a 30-second exposure in complete darkness while I manually triggered the flashes as soon as they would beep saying they were fully recycled. This allowed for a lower ISO of 400, shot on the Lumix S1R.

The front petals falls a little out of focus – any more softness and it would be a distraction. The same can be said for the stamens at the back, and focus stacking for stereo 3D is problematic to say the least – that sweet spot has to be found! For more crazy antics into obscure areas of macro photography, including all the general basics and masterclasses from snowflakes to water droplet refractions, pledge for a copy of my upcoming macro photography book on Kickstarter, now over 300% funded!: www.kickstarter.com/projects/donkom/macro-photography/

They were actually fighting over a female.

It's a funny and wonderful afternoon.

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I had oodles of fun with Signature Geralt and my shopping haul from the Signature Event. Check out my blog for credits:

billybeaverhausen.com/2018/07/18/dabbling-with-geralt-vi/

Location: maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/MadPea/96/137/24

Dabbling by the edge of the lake, this was one of the few times he held his head up out of the water. Must have been something very tasty down there.

A Male Green-winged Teal stretches its wings at Bowmanville Harbour, in Southern Ontario, Canada. Being the smallest Dabbling Duck species in North America, the male Green-winged Teal also has a very unique Whistling Call.

Another trip to WWT Slimbridge on the 1st February.

Water levels were high.

A lone male Northern Shoveler on the Tack Piece Lagoon.

The Northern Shoveler is my favourite Duck that we see in the UK.

The Northern Shoveler, or Shoveler, is a Dabbling Duck and is common in northern areas of Europe, Asia and North America.

The Shovelers bill has developed a comb like structure on its edges which acts like a sieve to filter out food from the water's surface.

The mallard is a dabbling duck that breeds throughout the temperate and subtropical Americas, Eurosiberia, and North Africa and has been introduced to New Zealand, Australia, Peru, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, the Falkland Islands, and South Africa. This duck belongs to the subfamily Anatinae of the waterfowl family Anatidae. The male birds have a glossy green head and are grey on their wings and belly, while the females have mainly brown-speckled plumage. Both sexes have an area of white-bordered black or iridescent blue feathers called a speculum on their wings; males especially tend to have blue speculum feathers. The mallard is 50–65 cm long, of which the body makes up around two-thirds the length. The wingspan is 81–98 cm and the bill is 4.4 to 6.1 cm long. It is often slightly heavier than most other dabbling ducks, weighing 0.72–1.58 kg. Mallards live in wetlands, eat water plants and small animals, and are social animals preferring to congregate in groups or flocks of varying sizes. This species is the main ancestor of most breeds of domesticated ducks.

A pair of mallards dabbling in our pond. Our beautiful world, pass it on.