Can someone tell me the difference btw.....
 

a mottled duck and a black mallard

should have been more specific how can i tell them apart?

I don't think a game warden can really tell them apart

cmon man been looking at pics of both. Killed 3 mottles this am one was very big in fact the same size as a greenhead and the other 2 mottles were smaller but both also drakes

Your black mallards are really dark in color, and the male has a grennish color beak and the female has a yellow beak. Your mottled ducks are a lighter color and they have beaks like mallard hens.

i identified the duck i shot this morning it was a mottled duck. put the band # in the computer (reportband.com) it was a drake mottled banded in 2008

I'm gonna have to print this out.....

I apologize. We hunt by rockefeller refuge and we kill alot of black mallards. That's what i was told by a biologist from the refuge. Just trying to help.

congrats on the jewelry!

It ain't easy, fortunately we don't get very many Black ducks down here. Mallard subspecies hybrids are not uncommon, that makes it worse. Maybe this will help.
http://www.greglasley.net/motblk.html

black mallard is a commonly used name for mottled ducks

vs. black duck

A good rule of thumb on speculum coloration to distinguish Mallards from Mottled Ducks and Black Ducks is:


Mallard : 2 white stripes (top and bottom)
Mottled Duck: 1 white stripe (bottom)
Black Duck: 0 white stripes

Yep.....and you can only kill 1 of each anyway. i would be safe and not kill more than 1 cause we dont get many true black ducks over here...if any

Exactly, 100% correct, only way to distinquish between the three for true indentification.



If you kill a "true" black duck down here, consider it a trophy!

We had the same problem last year with mottled duck and mallard hens. But we hunt a goose blind that sometimes gets a little water. All the ducks we get are just passing through so we arent experts of identification. We found out its all in the white of the wings.

There is no such thing as a black mallard.

I am from North Louisiana and we occasionally shot a few true Black Ducks, also known as Black Mallards. They would typically be in flocks of mallards. We do have a few small breeding populations in north La, one being Upper Oua****a NWR. I have killed mottleds in Richland Parish also. ]

I hear people down here calling mottleds Black Mallards also. Just a local thing I guess. As said above, the wing bars are a good indication if you only have a wing, but mottleds also have a little sorta black triangle in the corner of the bill that is a good indicator.

Down here, I would say 99% are mottleds, but IF it came in with mallards, you may have yourself a black duck.