this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2024
490 points (99.2% liked)
Microblog Memes
6027 readers
1194 users here now
A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.
Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.
Rules:
- Please put at least one word relevant to the post in the post title.
- Be nice.
- No advertising, brand promotion or guerilla marketing.
- Posters are encouraged to link to the toot or tweet etc in the description of posts.
Related communities:
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
“’Non-breeding’ plumage can mean any plumage that is not the plumage birds have moulted into specifically for the breeding season. (Some birds only moult once a year so at breeding time, their plumage is the same as the rest of the year, others have an additional moult early Spring into smarter feathers). So ‘non-breeding’ can mean an adult in winter plumage or an immature bird that has not yet reached maturity but as applied to birds that normally moult twice a year. Adult Birds moult out of their breeding plumage from around July onwards into a winter plumage. Usually it’s a lot more drab and less colourful than breeding plumage.” -Deb Burhinus
https://www.birdforum.net/threads/non-breeding-adults.402706/
Looks like they get into more detail but that was the first thing I found.
Awesome! There's a PDF referenced in there too that seems to go into a lot more detail about plumage and molt (40+ pages!), which I will have to read a bit later.
I've been seeing mallard ducks during my daily walks and have really been enjoying learning about them. They're seasonally monogamous, and this was an entertaining read about their mating habits: https://www.tyrantfarms.com/duck-mating/