Preparing for a Duck Stamp Competition! (3/4)
Author: Larry Seiler, Contributing Editor
I often work with mounts, and here...just looking at this Mallard's head, check out the distance of eye from bill. Look at the shape of the bill, or mandible.
Sketches need not be detailed, as I already know ducks have ten primary feathers, ten secondaries, tertials, greater and lesser coverts. What I'm looking for are "patterns" that isolate and identify one particular duck from another. After years of being on the bay hunting, I got to the point where I could identify waterfowl species while the birds were in flight and nearly a mile away.
I'll put a few of my flight studies up here...and note that sometimes just scribbles are enough to suggest to me shapes that the flight pattern takes.
Diving species are not able to simply rise in flight. They have to literally run with their webbed feet across the top of the water until they gain enough flight speed to get their fat bodies airborne. Such ducks wings are shorter. Their feet are located further back in the bodies, closer to their tails, which help propel and push them in underwater swimming, but make them very awkward and more upright when standing. Puddle ducks, such as mallards, have feet that are more centrally located, making them poor underwater swimmers. Their wings are longer and take to flight easily. Here is a sketch of a Bufflehead drake, a diver species, and I had particular fun studying how the feet push the bird across the water's top to get airborne.
