Are these Muscovy Ducks?

[dragon49]

Taken this afternoon in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Are these Muscovy Ducks, or Florida hybrids?

[Trevor L.]

Muscovy Ducks

[dragon49]

Ty

[millipede]

I'm a little curious how things work in Florida... there are some established feral populations there I guess... but for people reporting to eBird, how do they differentiate...  Here in Arkansas you can only report muscovies as domestics... even though they sure do breed... because, they are domestics and not true to the wild populations of their ancestors... 
I'm guessing the ones in Florida are more like the wild ones and are established there...  yet a quick look at a bar chart for that area shows only "muscovy duck" and no domestics reported.  I'd think they'd have both domestic and feral not so domestic...  this confuses me.   HA... 

[birdbrain22]

Florida is it's own separate beast when it comes to things like this. I believe the state bird record committee has to determine what species they are going to except and the criteria. Surely the Muscovies there are from domestics long ago... but have been breeding there so long they are now "established" and considered a wild domestic, if you will. They are certainly not like the truly wild Muscovy from Mexico/Central America. Same is true for the other exotics that are excepted in FLA... Black-hooded Parakeet, Common Mynas and the like. I would bet in the next few years other species are added... like Yellow-chevroned Parakeet and Mitred Parrot among others.

Edited February 22, 2020 by birdbrain22

[millipede]

On 2/21/2020 at 10:21 PM, birdbrain22 said:

Florida is it's own separate beast when it comes to things like this. I believe the state bird record committee has to determine what species they are going to except and the criteria. Surely the Muscovies there are from domestics long ago... but have been breeding there so long they are now "established" and considered a wild domestic, if you will. They are certainly not like the truly wild Muscovy from Mexico/Central America. Same is true for the other exotics that are excepted in FLA... Black-hooded Parakeet, Common Mynas and the like. I would bet in the next few years other species are added... like Yellow-chevroned Parakeet and Mitred Parrot among others.

That's what I'd figure... what confuses me is how they're reported. In the palm beach area, there are only "muscovy duck" reported... no "domestic" attached to the name.(this is on eBird) and for the whole state, if you look at the bar charts, the majority are just muscovy with the domestics rarely being reported.
I've heard that there is a population in Florida that is more wild type but I don't know how anyone could separate them especially when domestics would surely be polluting that population.
eBird seems to have an "established feral" option(some of the pictures are labeled as such) yet on the bar charts, it doesn't show them as feral. In fact, if you look at the explore option and go to the whole united states and then search down for muscovy, you wont find "feral" listed anywhere but plenty that say just "muscovy duck."  This is confusing... especially since if you "explore species" and do a search for the feral type, the map matches the result if you were looking at it as "muscovy duck." 

I'm overthinking this perhaps... but it's confusing. I would think that "feral established" would be the option to select there but I don't understand how that's not how it's listed.
side note... I still haven't figured out what the criteria for getting something listed as established is. We have both muscovy and egyptian geese that breed here but I guess not in big enough numbers to be considered established.
 

Hmm... I think I figured something out, which is still sort of confusing/misleading if you ask me. I just did a search for rock pigeons here. I know when you submit to eBird it says they're feral, it doesn't just say "rock pigeon" but, the output just lists "rock pigeon" without the feral part... 

This is sort of making sense yet, with the muscovy, it still confuses me because there's a big difference between feral populations of wild birds and domestics that have established themselves... and with muscovies, I'd think most were domestic escapees...  IF the birds of a species aren't true to their wild form from another country, I'd think the output would reflect that one way or another.
eh... sorry, I'm rambling.