I was taking a walk (as I always do) on Saturday morning around my neighbourhood. There's a couple of ponds around and on the bank of one of those ponds, I saw two strange ducks. Their bright yellow beaks really caught my attention and I took a couple of photos, but I thought they were just strange mallards.
Upon further research once I got home, however, it turned out that these ducks were, in fact, Yellow-Billed Ducks! They are only native to some parts of Africa. Not sure how or why they came here to North-Western Germany! Maybe escaped pets?
Often times, strange ducks and geese you see at your local park will be from weird parts of the world. They are usually considered ornamental and were placed there intentionally.
Here in the US at many of our parks we have Egyptian Geese:
I would generally agree with you, just that I go there almost every day (I live basically right next to it) and have never seen them there. I have seen these ornamental birds in other places before (such as Muscovy Ducks, Peafowl, Mandarin Ducks ...) but never Yellow-Billed Ducks and never around where I live. So I honestly have my doubts about them in particular having been placed there intentionally.
I also checked Ornitho.de (the German eBird equivalent) and the only sightings of this duck in my region this year were from me (10.06.23) and someone who saw one of them around 10 km away on 06.06.2023.
Egyptian Geese are pretty common here as well, though they're not ornamental and are an actually somewhat established species here (just like Canada Geese which aren't native to Germany but can be found everywhere). They can be pretty aggressive towards other birds, though.
It’s a really neat find! They are listed as not migratory so maybe your hunch is correct and they were perhaps someone’s pets that escaped?
Either way, I would be excited to report them on eBird or the German equivalent with the photos! 🤩
https://ebird.org/checklist/S141315754 - I'm way ahead of you! :-) eBird seems to have reported it as a rarity and it's currently waiting to be confirmed (whatever that entails, I've never reported a rare bird before haha)
I saw that a couple of zoos nearby (well, "nearby" - I found one like 80 km away) seem to have them, so maybe it's possible that they escaped from there as well?
Unfortunately they were just sitting on the ground so I wasn't able to see if they had been ringed. I'll check again soon to see if they're still there and if I can get a glimpse of their legs to see if they have a ring! They weren't shy at all, however, and didn't mind my getting close (hence the close-up photo). That might also be indicative of their being either an escaped pet or a zoo "inhabitant" - they'd be used to humans then. Other ducks (even the mallards) wouldn't have let me come this close without leaving. Especially not now with all the chicks around!