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A Male and Female Wood Duck (Aix sponsa) photo by Steve Berliner
Judging by its name alone, the wood duck (Aix sponsa) sounds a little bland but it is actually one of the most colorful little waterfowl of North America. The male wood duck in particular is covered with iridescent green and red feathers which are grouped apart by lovely white and black demarcation lines. In addition, male wood ducks have bright red eyes, orange beaks, yellow feet and white bellies. The female wood duck is colored more subtly but is also very beautiful, as explained in a quote from artist and conservationist Robert Bateman who states, “the subtlety and form of the females display a classic elegance which suggests the wild and vulnerable wooded wetlands of this world.”
A pair of wood ducks by Katey Brown
Wood ducks measure 47 to 54 cm (19 to 21 in) in length. They feed on acorns, seeds, and berries from the land and on aquatic invertebrates and water weeds when on water. Not only are they omnivores, but they can swim, dive, run, and fly quite well. Wood ducks are close relatives of the equally beautiful mandarin ducks (Aix galericulata) of East Asia—the two species must have shared a Northern ancestor which lived near the dividing lines between the great continents.
Wood Duck Range (http://bioweb.uwlax.edu)
The wood duck’s plumage is so lovely and vibrant that the species went into dreadful decline in the late nineteenth century as a result of the millinery industry (which was converting all the male ducks into ladies’ hats). Fortunately, today people do not set such high esteem by fancy hats. Additionally, conservation efforts have been adding to the ducks’ habitat (as have beavers, which, when spreading back to traditional habitats, create ponds where the ducks live) and waterfowl enthusiasts have been building little duck houses to help the ducks breed and nest. Careful stewardship of hunting permits has kept duck hunters as avid partners in duck restoration and the wood duck is slowly regaining its (webbed) foothold as a part of the wild and quasi-wild places in North America.
A lovely wood duck painting from a site dedicated to their conservation (http://www.dbcl.org/woodduck.htm)
Bronze Turkey Tom (Meleagris gallopavo)
Indian Peafowl (Pavo cristatus)
A while ago, ferrebeekeeper added the new category “fowl”. So far, entries in this category include a write-up of predatory ducks, geese the size of dinosaurs, and terrifying people in duck costumes (not to mention the yet-to-be incorporated category of turkeys)—a pretty auspicious start for the topic! But what exactly does “fowl” mean? Although in English, “fowl” can be used as a general term for all birds, the word has a more specific scientific meaning: fowl denotes a combined group of two extremely important biological orders of birds, the Galliformes (game fowl) and the Anseriformes (waterfowl). Cladists, taxonomists who classify biological organisms according to shared ancestors, have discovered that birds from these two orders share numerous physiological features and descend jointly from a common ancestor (which most likely lived in the Cretaceous or earlier).
Mandarin Duck ((Aix galericulata)
Black Swan (Cygnus atratus)
The vast majority of economically/agriculturally important domesticated birds are either galliformes or waterfowl (I am omitting pet birds like canaries, parrots, emus, pigeons, and, um, gyrefalcons, and concentrating on farm birds). Galliformes include pheasants, quail, grouse, turkeys, junglefowl, partridges, and guineafowl (among other taxa, living and extinct). Waterfowl include geese, ducks, swans, and screamers. Cladists (with typical lack of euphony) call the combined group the “Galloanserae”.
Buff Orpington Rooster (Gallus gallus domesticus) by Chris Mullineux
Palawan Peacock Pheasant (Polyplectron napoleonis) by Rene Lausberg
Although golden pheasants, black swans, and green peacocks seem extremely different (except in terms of extravagant beauty), the birds of Galloanserae share surprising similarities. They produce prolific clutches of eggs–which is especially unusual for large birds–and the resultant chicks are unusually precocious. Baby ducks or turkeys can soon run after their mother and baby megapodes emerge from the incubation mound ready to fly (compare that with the passerines or raptors whose young are helpless and immobile for weeks or longer).
Southern Screamer (Chauna torquata) by Susan Roehl
Greater Sage Grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus)
Additionally fowl are polygynous or polygamous. Many other birds form close monogamous relationships (some of which last for life) but fowl tend to be rather, er, promiscuous. Domestic chickens are notable for their harem-style sexual relations and dabbling ducks are infamous for the violent amoral chaos of their courtship. Likewise, fowl can hybridize easily and in strange ways. Birds which live in different genera can have courtships, produce eggs, and even conceive offspring. In fact common mallard ducks (Anas platyrhynchos) originated in Siberia but have interbred so frequently with American black duck (Anas rubripes), and with Northern Pintail (Anas acuta) that the species distinctions are breaking down. Stranger and more unlikely fowl pairings are not unknown (and the resultant offspring are sometimes not infertile) but I will leave those soap opera stories for another day….
Canada Goose (Branta canadensis)
Lady Amethyst Pheasant (hybrid)
Willinhausener Gänselliesel (Adolf Lins, oil on canvas)
Most painters find a particular subject and they stick with it their whole life. The themes which dominate an artist’s oeuvre can be all sorts of things: doomed warriors, Christ’s love, dark beauty, prime numbers, death-in-life, imperious aristocrats,monstrous pride, melancholy flowers, unruly goddesses…you name it. In the case of Adolf Lins the great subject to which he devoted his life work was…well, it was domestic poultry. Lins was truly great at painting ducks, geese, and chickens. He demonstrates that maybe not every artist has to concentrate on the ineluctable nature of time or the chasm between desire and reality. His poultry paintings are still well loved (although he is not the subject of long biographies like many of his peers).
Gänse am Weiher (Adolf Lins, oil on canvas)
Lins studied at the Academy of Arts in Kassel. He later followed some fellow artists to Düsseldorf where it seems he fell in love with the gentle agrarian rhythms of the fertile farms by the Rhine. He lived from 1856 to 1927–and though Germany changed again and again in that time, he kept his eyes on the modest glory of the local ponds and fields.
Enten am Flußufer (Adolf Lins)
Lins had a talent for painting verdant Rhine foliage and glittering pools. He was also proficient at painting apple-cheeked farm children and lissome goose-girls, but his real skills and interests lay in the depiction of the individual fowl which are the focal points of his paintings. Each bird has its own personality and is busied with its own pursuits. Cantankerous geese squawk and bicker about flock politics (while other disinterested geese preen themselves or nap). Mallards in a forest pool gather around a white domestic duck with a lambent yellow bill. Two roosters fluff out their feathers and lower their heads as they prepare to battle to the death for possession of the flock behind them. Lins’ works may not concern the massive ebb and flow of historical or philosophical concerns in the human world, but he deftly captures the very real struggles and delights of the lives of domesticated farm birds. The feathers and mud and beaks seem real–and so does the liveliness of flock life a century ago. Any contemporary poultry farmer can instantly recognize what is going on in a Lins painting and share a quiet smile with small stock owners across the gulf of time.
Imminent Battle (Adolf Lins)
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