Must be a hybrid

A bitser of a day. A bit of this and a bit of that from the start to the finish. I was able to go from a meeting on a short walk in Pukekawa (the Auckland Domain), and sit by the duck pond to eat a rather late lunch.  

I noticed the duck in the middle of the pond, and thought that its colour was not the usual for a mallard (Rakiraki). Enlarging the photo this evening, I note a couple of features supporting that it is a hybrid. The mallard has at most a thin black eye stripe while the Parera (Grey Duck) has two distinct eye stripes. This duck has neither one nor the other. Speculum borders are broad, which is what the mallard has. The Parera has a grey bill, and the mallard has a yellow-orange bill. The hybrid tends to have a grey bill with hints of yellow, as does this bird.. The tail is grey in the Parera and hybrid and brown in the mallard, and the legs of the mallard are orange while those of the Parera are grey. All up a bit of a bitser of a duck.

After I got home, I needed to go out again for some coffee for my office at work, and popped by Western Springs Lake. The lake is very low, and some of the smaller subsidiary lakes are completely dry. The ground is becoming very dusty and where the now removed geese had torn up the grass, the soil is breaking up even more. The blackbird in my extra seemed to be enjoying running around chasing sparrows on one of the dustiest areas.