Domestic duck

A beautiful day blue sky, little cloud and early morning and not raining like yesterday
An incredibly large proportion of requests for help with identification from non-birders or novice birders relate to domestic ducks or domestic geese. That's because they don't appear in most bird books and they often look nothing like their wild ancestors.

Most domestic ducks derive from Mallard Anas platyrhynchos. Strictly, the term domestic implies that they are kept by someone but when most people talk about domestic ducks they include birds that are living in the wild but descended from domestic stock - a more accurate term might be "domestic variant of Mallard" as this does not imply that they are still associating with humans. Those who breed and keep Mallards have a number of names for the various breeds (e.g. Aylesbury, Indian Runner, etc.) which have been produced through selective breeding, but essentially they are all the same species: Mallard. Many are released or escape into the wild where they continue breeding with each other and with wild Mallards. With less control over their breeding in the wild, the appearance of domestic Mallards in the wild becomes even more variable. Unfortunately so many are breeding in the wild that you'll struggle to find pure wild-type Mallards in some areas. Most Mallards on village ponds for example usually derive from domestic stock.