This pair of Black-bellied Whistling Ducks are the first “Whistlers” I have ever seen in person. I have been virtually observing the antics of Whistlers via my blog friend Tex’s blog, “The Run Around Ranch Blog”, and have always wanted to see these comical, lovely, smart wild ducks myself. I had read that Whistling Ducks do live in Florida but I had never spotted any in the past year that I’ve lived here. My luck changed on Saturday, July 19, 2014 when I saw this cute pair. These ducks were paddling on a small pond in a pasture at a local race horse farm. I saw three of the Whistlers last evening on this same pond (23 July 2014), shown first row below.
Whistling Ducks have upright posture, are a Cinnamon brown color and have a pink bill, pink legs, pink feet, with white and black wings. They have a black belly and a faint black stripe down the back of their head. Their calls are whistling sounds, which probably are similar to but a little stronger whistle sound, than Wood Ducks. I took these pictures from behind a tallish wooden rail fence along the roadway. Please click on the thumbnail image to see the larger picture. I hope you have enjoyed this surprise – I sure did! Sorry this is posted a bit late today. I had to have an Internet tech come and do repairs to the cable system (three buildings had a similar outage here last night and this AM). So back to normal now.
