Clapham Common: Uncommon Urbanite

Wavier water in large.
Extras:
Portrait portrait
Courtship display (2/3)

I met a friend at Clapham Common, and was pleased to spot this gadwall on the boating pond en route. I've never seen a gadwall on an urban pond before, but then the boating pond is something of a staging post for migrants and passers-through (possibly because it doesn't have an established resident population).
This is a male in eclipse plumage, and he was persistently courting a female mallard and chasing off the mallard drakes. Gadwalls are closely related to mallards, and the two species often hybridise, so often that the hybrids have gained their own common name: "Brewer's duck"...

Other views of him here (or right from Gadwall (m) gazing)