Country diary: finely dressed gadwall has an air of austere decency

I don’t know a bird book that has much to say about the gadwall (Anas strepera). Generally this unobtrusive winter duck is compared with the more common mallard, and comes off worse: smaller (just), duller (much), either shriller (the duck) or coarser (the drake) in quack. But like many a winter bird – think of the intricate copper-trimmed scalloping of a starling’s non-breeding plumage – the gadwall repays a little close attention.

There are eight patrolling the choppy open water of the lake today. It’s a duck-rich morning: wigeon graze the grassed banks; teal, small and as trim as tea clippers, bob in and out of the island bays; the pigeon-grey of the water’s surface is broken by the white front of a drake shoveler (genus Spatula: you could flip a fried egg with its flattened-out bill). There’s no sun, today, no reflective glare from the lake; the ducks, so often lost in the play of shadow and light on uneven water, are foregrounded, their crisp winter liveries shown to their advantage.

The gadwall has an air of austere decency about it: something to do, I think, with its posture, the neck held noticeably straight to the perpendicular, upright and officer-like, none of the mallard’s disreputable slouch. The drake appears dressed in close-fitted tweeds, a fine houndstooth of tan and grey. The white secondary feathers of the inner wing – the patch known as the speculum – set off the ensemble like the protruding edge of a pocket handkerchief.

Windward of the islands, a male tufted duck, its crown feathers a sort of damp pigtail, jackknifes and dives. In diving like this for molluscs and other water invertebrates, it’s in a minority here (gadwall, shoveler and teal are all surface-feeding “dabblers”), but it’s not alone: on the far side of the lake, the bulbous hobby-horse head of a goldeneye turns slowly towards me with the water’s drift, and then it, too, takes the plunge. Then a covey of feeding stock doves clatter up out of the grass – and when I look back, I can’t see the goldeneye. Nearer to, a gadwall pair promenade by, poised, impeccable, perfectly turned out.

https://www.theguardian.com/environm...west-yorkshire