{"id":6581,"date":"2012-10-26T12:04:06","date_gmt":"2012-10-26T19:04:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=6581"},"modified":"2012-10-26T12:04:06","modified_gmt":"2012-10-26T19:04:06","slug":"speculum-speculation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=6581","title":{"rendered":"Speculum speculation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The speculum feathers of various ducks are curious. These are the patches of often iridescent colour on the inner wings of many species of ducks. The colour of speculum (Latin for mirror) feathers differs from one species to another, and the function seems a bit obscure.<\/p>\n<p>Many of the other colourful feathers found on male ducks seem to have evolved in response to the sexual preferences of females. But, breeding preference is unlikely to have influenced speculum feathers, for they appear essentially the same on each sex.<\/p>\n<p>Further, the speculum feathers are not particularly visible unless the duck is flying and then they are most easily seen\u00a0from behind. It seems likely that the function is\u00a0primarily\u00a0that of a signal among flying members of a species so as to maintain the cohesion of a flock.<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0blue-purple speculum of the Mallard is seen from behind when the bird is in flight.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-6583\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/mallard121024s.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The speculum seems to help ducks identify their own species when flying in a flock (birds of a feather&#8230;).<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-6585\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/mallards110401s.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"722\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; The speculum feathers of various ducks are curious. These are the patches of often iridescent colour on the inner wings of many species of ducks. The colour of speculum (Latin for mirror) feathers differs from one species to another, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=6581\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6581"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6593,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6581\/revisions\/6593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}