The last three Blue Ducks (Hymenolaimus malacorhynchus) in UK are two males and a female. The attempts of have a successful breeding are failed... because the two males love each other! http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wi...-out-in-UK-after-male-birds-get-together.html In one hand it's a courious new that make smile, but in the other hand it's an endangered species with quick habitat loss and difficut to breed in captivity because it lives in mountain rivers and torrents... We hope that soon they will have another drake for the alone female.
Captive breeding in the UK hits an all time low as two male ducks fall in love! Sweet but sad story, did give me a bit of a giggle, on the point of weird love stories did anyone see the swan that fell in love with the boat?
That was on springwatch, wasn't it. Apparently it got depressed when they took the pedalo away so now they've brought it back again!
I was at Arundel a few weeks ago, just after this story appeared on the WWT website. I only saw 2 blue ducks (which I presume were the males) so I hoped the female might have found somewhere quiet to nest. I guess I was wrong. Photos of one of the ducks and the aviary in the gallery. Alan
the story as told by an NZ paper, with info on the history of the birds. The comments by NZer Murray Williams are quite amusing: he seems to have some sort of sour grapes issue, as much as saying the ducks weren't supposed to be outside of NZ at all. Blue ducks outside NZ 'doomed' | Stuff.co.nz
I suppose that when a bird is so endangered and both sex are identical, any serious zoo would send feather samples for DNA sexing.
I would imagine so too. If the sexes are accurate the only reason I can see for both drakes ignoring the female is because she's too old and therefore unattractive to them as a partner, but it is rather an odd situation.
I just came across this update whilst looking for something else: Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT) - National WWT News