On one of our recent walks, Paddy and I spotted a couple of ducks in among the mallards on the lake. Paddy wasn't very interested as they weren't cats, but I was curious to know what they were.
Prolonged investigation did not solve the problem until a friend suggested that they were probably " male mallard variant plumage probably caused by crossing with escaped domesticated mallard breed; this variant seems to crop up everywhere spasmodically, probably a recessive gene that exhibits in phenotype every few generations. "
So that's that, then. Pity really, as I was getting quite excited at the thought of being the discoverer of a new species and having it named after me. "Jenny's Duck" - has a certain ring to it, don't you think?