What happened to Bosley. . . . . .

I received this email just now, regarding a post I did in 2016. I feel a little too stunned to write about it now. We were pretty certain Bosley had died/been killed (he looked more like a domestic duck than a wild one, and whenever we see domestic ducks in the wild, we know they will not last long).

It's a sense of loss that I've already had for a couple of years. I tell myself: it's nature, it's the life cycle, etc. But Bosley wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, duckwise, and more than once I saw him waddling around on land. Once he was actually being chased by a mallard drake. But I think it may have been a predator that got him, as coyotes, bears and even cougars roam around within our city limits. The other thing is, I never did see him fly, and if he was bred for meat, as many ducks are, perhaps his wing capacity was too limited to get him out of trouble.

Anyway, here is her message, and I will try to assemble a proper memorial when I can.

"I found the duck you write about dead in the water over by the playground area. I called him Shep. He was my friend for 9 years. The brown one that hung around with him went missing 3 weeks ago. I looked for her everyday since. Today when I was at the lake I saw a huge amount of feathers float down the lake from the same area I found Shep. I know it hah to be Belinda as you called home. I believe the Mallards may have drowned him during mating time. I witnessed a few big mallards weeks prior chasing/harassing him so I am guessing rough play during mating season was the cause of his death. When Shep died a few years ago Bentley was extremely sad. He searched for Shep calling him for a long time. The green mallard that hung around with Shep and Bentley went missing a few months after. Him and Shep were very close. The three of them were bonded. I believe the green mallard was so depressed he stopped eating and got weak for predictors. Bentley lived 2 years and 2 weeks without them. After some time after his friends deaths, he paired up with a mallard and a female brown duck. They were friends for a long time until his demise 3 weeks ago. They are all in heaven now swimming together. I hope this information answered your questions and put your mind at rest. Don’t feel sad, they had a great life and now they are finally all together at last.

Shep died April 14, 2020,he was 9 years old, his mallard friend died August of same year, and Belinda (was really a he), he died 3 weeks ago. Sorry, I got the Belinda and Bentley names mixed up in my last post. Hope this sorts it out for you."

Here is my reply:

We were pretty sure something had happened to him - we used to see him every time we went there, then it just stopped. I am not sure if nine years is a long time for a duck, but I think it is for one living in the wild. And now his companion as well - I do remember the three of them swimming around together. This takes away something of the
magic of the lake. It seems almost deserted now, which baffles me. I know birds are very cyclic, but I'm not seeing a lot of birds anywhere now, not even at Burnaby Lake which is usually teeming with them. I appreciate your letting me know what happened. I know this is all part of nature, but I still feel the loss. I will miss him and "Belinda" and the drake. Nature does very interesting things, as in creating a little flock of three.

So they are all gone - the odd little flock of three (which we suspected were all male, though Belinda was so gorgeous with her curly tail, and MASSIVE - more the size of a goose). I have seen domestic birds (most recently, a glorious white dove which ate out of my hand) 

and even white waddly barnyard creatures, three of them, then two, then one - easy pickings for birds which are not "street-smart" in the wild. 

Sadly, this year Como Lake is practically deserted. Our lagoon is also very sparse, except in one of the lookouts which was 2 inches deep in goose shit! It was as if someone had just dumped a barrel of it on the boards. A goose convention? We've seen them before, a sort of stopover, usually VERY loud. We have also seen sandhill cranes, a red-tailed hawk and five wild swans in our lagoon. Why is all the magic being taken away? When will they return?

BOSLEY ATTACKS!

Bosley is the handsome but mysterious hybrid duck we've been following for several years on our walks around Como Lake. He's almost always there, in a little flock of three, along with his girl friend Belinda and a mallard drake we call Drake. Though it's difficult to tell without a lot of ornithological knowledge, Bosley is most likely a hybrid of mallard and magpie duck, which is a goose-sized domestic duck with black-and-white or brown-and-white patches. Magpie ducks are raised for their meat, which may explain why Bosley's ancestors saw fit to escape.

Belinda is a bit of a mystery. She appeared last spring, still a juvenile and more mottled than patchy. She has grown into a fatly gorgeous thing with who-knows-what bloodlines, though with her size and meatiness (sorry, Belinda), it's likely she also carries domestic duck genes. It's a fine romance.

So our little flock of three is swimming peacefully around, when suddenly - ! Well, you'll just have to watch the video. Now that I see it more rationally, I realize that the other party may have done the attacking. It's easy to misinterpret what you see in nature, and even easier to interfere for your own misguided purposes.

The conservationists would have us put the orphaned baby moose back in the woods to fend for itself, though it probably won't last 24 hours. What is the alternative? A big, dumb, tame moose, which is one more small step towards extinction for a species which has become habituated. I won't get into the anguish of what is happening to wild habitat - it's the kind of thing I can't afford to let myself think about too much. Sad how small my thought world is becoming. All those condos, where there used to be green space.

Hybrid lovers

Our miracle duck has found a mate!

Bosley, the magpie duck/mallard hybrid of Como Lake, has had an interesting summer. We almost always see this handsome, friendly guy dabbling along the shore or waddling around, fat as a goose. But then he disappeared for weeks, and we were very worried. Finally we saw him frantically running towards the lake, a mallard drake in hot pursuit. We were a bit shocked, but thought, well, maybe Bosley is a Boslina. Another time, we saw him chilling in the reeds with what looked like the same drake. What was going on?

Then the other day, an amazing development: Bosley appears with a completely different duck, which also looks like a hybrid. She (for it must be a she) is white with creamy-tan markings, a cocoa-brown head and neck, and a white ring where a mallard's neck-ring would be. She has the ruffly wing-feathers and tail-curlicue of a magpie duck, and her long bill, very strangely, is green.

Trust Bosley to pick a true exotic. I don't know if these two will produce young, but I hope so. Oddly enough, a lone male mallard is still hanging around with them, and I can't tell if it's the same one as before.

A threesome? What can it mean?

Bosley's great adventure!

Bosley is the name we gave to a very strange duck who lives with a flock of mallards in Como Lake. We kept wondering why a very large, piebald duck would hang around with wild birds like that. He looked more like a domestic duck than a wild one. Finally, unable to get any information about him, I sent a gif of him swimming to the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, one of the world's foremost institutions of aviana/birdology.

They got back to me right away, to my surprise, telling me that their best guess is that he's a hybrid of a mallard and a magpie duck, a large-ish domestic duck raised for meat. (See example below). It made sense. These ducks are black-and-white, whereas Bosley's markings have the mottled brown tones of a mallard - in particular, a female.

So it shouldn't have surprised us to see a male mallard chasing after her. She was waddling around on land - the first time we've seen her (him? Still not sure) do that. We've been watching her for a couple of years now, and it's amazing how we see her almost every time we visit.  Once when all the mallards had flown away, we saw him (her?) in the very middle of the lake, dabbling and paddling around alone.

I can see why one of Bosley's parents would want to run away from home if he or she were about to become dinner. But it is obvious this is a true adoption. I mean, if the rest of the flock wants to mate with you. . .  The mallard drake might have been pursuing (her) romantically, or chasing (him) off as a rival. But now that I look at that mottled brown breast, I seriously wonder if Bosley is really a Boslette.

It's a funny video, and unique among all our Bosliana.

BLOGGER'S FOOTNOTE. I found a very strange group of pictures of ducks very similar to Bosley (see example, above) - only they were even more mallardy (or mallardly) than our Bos. I say more mallardly because some of them even had the iridescent green heads of the mallard drake. This was on a duck forum of some kind, and everyone took a guess at what kind of ducks these were. They came up with half a dozen names of very exotic-sounding purebred breeds. Fuck, guys! These are bastard pretenders, the love children of two duck species, and you cannot admit it because mallards are just too common. They're like pigeons, really. Only little kids like them.

And magpie ducks.

Are these magpie/mallard hybrids?