{"id":7373,"date":"2012-03-31T03:23:16","date_gmt":"2012-03-31T01:23:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/?p=7373"},"modified":"2026-07-16T08:00:49","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T07:00:49","slug":"american-black-duck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/american-black-duck\/","title":{"rendered":"American Black Duck"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The male American Black Duck, Anas rubripes, has a dark body and light head, orange-red legs, unblemished yellowish bill, and a black-bordered blue speculum — the brightly colored patch of feathers on the wing.<\/p>\n

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The black duck in the photos is locally famous among birdwatchers in Brooklyn, New York, for pairing with a female Mallard, Anas platyrhynchos. She is easily distinguished by a white-bordered blue speculum, black-splotched orange bill, and other mallard field marks. They were loafing together in a small pond in Brooklyn Bridge Park. The male had just chased away a male Mallard! A similar couple, perhaps the same one, was seen with chicks on the East River, not far from this spot, last year.<\/p>\n

Stretching, below, shows off the male’s violet-blue speculum and brightly colored foot. The color of the speculum seems to change with the light. This is the same bird as above.<\/p>\n

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Visit my blog for more about this couple and other urban wildlife. For even more, see my book, Field Guide to Urban Wildlife.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The male American Black Duck, Anas rubripes, has a dark body and light head, orange-red legs, unblemished yellowish bill, and a black-bordered blue speculum — the brightly colored patch of feathers on the wing. The black duck in the photos is locally famous among birdwatchers in Brooklyn, New York, for pairing with a female Mallard, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":2192065,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/BlackDuck11.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6984,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs","category-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2192065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}