Michael Braun hybrid displaying can/redhead video clip...

Ric~


Interesting!


Is the Can/Redhead hybrid somewhat common? Where does the purple (Ringneck, Lesser) head color come from? Neither species is common here in eastern NY.


All the best,


SJS

 
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Steve, Michael Braun is making me one of those hybrids...that might even be my bird and I just haven?t heard from him yet. I had taken a picture of a hybrid on the last day of duck season last year. I shared with some friends and one of them ended up having Mike do a bird for him. I saw it and wanted one of my own

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And since I have a hard time posting from my phone, I will do this second post.

Down here in the Big Bend of FL we can get LOTS of redheads on the Gulf. At one time Lake Seminole had LOTS of canvasbacks as well. I do not know how often the cans would head to the coast numberwise but I do see them from time to time on coastal ponds like the one in my picture.

As far as how often hybridization occurs, I really do not know.
 
Interesting back story! Would you please post it up when you receive it, Dani? Maybe with some comparator photos of the real bird! Mike, does chip carved birds quite a bit, too, a lost art within an art form...
 
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When I receive my decoy I shall, though the pictures I have are of a live bird. That hybrid never made it in my game bag. I had the flu the last week of the season and I wanted to get out and SEE some birds even if I didn't feel like hunting them. He was on a no hunting area of the St. Marks NWR (plus you can't hunt waterfowl within the NWR). I am not certain if the one posted is mine or not...when he asked me what pose I wanted, I basically gave him artistic license to do whatever he wanted. I told him I just didn't want it to be sleeping.

We shall see....if that beauty is mine then I am very very very excited.

Steve, when I saw the bird I really couldn't decide between ringneck x canvasback or redhead x canvasback. With the lighting I had and the rain and the distance, colors weren't as sharp as I would have liked. Either way, it was a really neat bird.

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Very interesting, when I posted the video I never noticed the magenta hues on the head and just "worked" off the bill length and body feather coloring. The differentiating nesting behavior issue, redheads versus ringnecks and cans, is that redheads are nest parasites, generally laying fertilized eggs in other specie's nests. I would assume this keeps hybridization at a lower rate with other species, but have never tried to find any scientific studies addressing the incidence with redheads versus other species. Pochards look very similar as well..

Mike Braun is one of my favorite commercial carvers, largely because his birds are not "formulaic" renditions of a species.
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These are foam filled canvasbacksgdvs he carved for Tanglefree. I repainted them completely, post receipt, but they depict the unique approach to his rendering of the species.
 
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