Pacific Black Duck
Life in the air
DONATE
YOU CAN SUPPORT CREATIVE COWBOY FILMS BY DONATING
Your support will assist us to continue our research and content development, the greater our resources, the more we can do.
The more we have an accurate understanding of what is happening to nature, the more we can all do to protect what remains of our living planet.
This is also an opportunity for philanthropists to be part of an ongoing project that tells independent stories about the natural world, stories that will help us to better understand what is happening to species and places on our precious planet Earth.
Note: Creative Cowboy Films does NOT have tax deductible charity status.
Become a Member
Becoming a member of Creative cowboy films The Nature Knowledge Channel is a very real way you can help the precious natural world and support the work we do in creating knowledge about what is happening to it.
Membership
You can access thiscontent and other stories by becoming a member or donating
Sign up NowBecoming a member of Creative cowboy films
The Nature Knowledge Channel is a very real way you can help the precious natural world and support the work we do in creating knowledge about the natural world.
Annual membership of the Creative cowboy films - Nature Knowledge Channel gives you full access to content, stories and films, available on this website. Becoming a member of the Creative cowboy films - Nature Knowledge Channel is a very real way you can help the natural world and support our work in creating a greater understanding about what is happening to it.
A point of difference
Creative cowboy films is independent, is not funded by governments or industry, and is not influenced by their associated interest groups. For reasons of independent research and content development, Creative cowboy films does NOT have tax deductible charity status.
“Filled with shotgun pellets that spray the air in their cowardice, tens of thousands of Pacific Black Ducks, the precious birdlife of Australia, have tumbled towards Victoria’s earth and water, year on year and year after year after year”.
Standing at Lake Cullen, part of the Ramsar system in Northern Victoria, waiting for the shooting to start on the opening morning of Victoria’s Duck shooting season was like waiting for an execution. It was horrible and depressing and stomach churning. This is definitely a place that none of you should be in. Great suffering, for precisely no purpose at all. We see all the suffering and it shocks us to the core.
Distribution
The Pacific Black Duck Anas superciliosa has a wide geographic distribution and occurs in Australia, parts of Indonesia (South Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi and Irian Jaya), Papua New Guinea (including New Britain and New Ireland) and New Zealand (where the pure form has declined significantly) as well as the islands of the southwest Pacific Ocean, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Caroline Islands, Palau, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa and American Samoa, Cook Islands and the Society Islands.
Subspecies
The Pacific Black Duck is a very handsome bird, with its distinctive facial stripe and green speculum on its secondary wing feathers.
The three subspecies are pelewensis (distribution south-west Pacific Islands and north New Guinea), rogersi (distribution Indonesian, south New Guinea and Australia) and superciliosa (distribution New Zealand and its offshore islands). In New Zealand the species is known locally as the Grey Duck.
While the ‘global’ population remains relatively large the population trend is uncertain. What is well documented are the significant and recent declines in the subspecies superciliosa and rogersi.
In1970, the IUCN put the New Zealand population of superciliosa at 1.5 million birds and estimates of the 1993 population places the species in a population range of 80,000 to 150,000 birds.
Declines are attributed to habitat loss and competition from other species and a process of hybridisation, the later particularly evident in New Zealand. Declines in Indonesia and Melanesia are mainly attributed to hunting and habitat loss and this will also be the case in Australia.
We should note that, just because the Pacific Black Duck appears to be relatively common in Australia, this is not an excuse to massacre the species at scale. We should take a moment to remember the fate of the Passenger Pigeon Ectopistes migratorius. Its population prior to extinction by mass slaughter was estimated at three to five billion birds, a number vastly greater than the number of Pacific Black Ducks.