In Search of the Elusive Pink-Headed Duck

After years of trying, one man thinks he will finally find a bird long thought to be extinct.
by Sarah Laskow
 

June 01, 2017

More than a century ago, in the wetlands around Kolkata, India, there lived a shy type of duck with a bright pink head. It was named, appropriately, the pink-headed duck. The males of the species had rosy pink bills and pink plumage covering their heads and necks. Some of them had light, blush-colored feathers; others were as bright as Pepto-Bismol. They were never particularly common, but hunters spotted them and on occasion bagged them while hunting bigger game. One of the last times anyone saw a pink-headed duck in the wild, it was in the mouth of a hunting dog, who delivered its carcass to Charles M. Inglis, curator of the Darjeeling museum, outside the Indian city of Darbhanga in June 1935.

Officially, the pink-headed duck is listed as critically endangered. The last confirmed sighting in the wild was in 1949. Though there have been reports of pink-headed ducks here and there in the decades since, many people now believe the birds are not just rare and shy, but extinct.

Richard Thorns is not among them. For years now, he has been searching for the pink-headed duck, and, since 2009, he has traveled six times to Myanmar, where he believes a flock of about 50 birds might live. Thorns, an enthusiastic, 53-year-old Englishman whose look can range from scholarly nerd to rugged adventurer, first learned about the pink-headed duck around 1997, from a library book on vanishing birds. At the time, he was working as a shop assistant. As he read about these stunning, rare birds, and the elephant grasses and lotus flowers that they lived among, he had a realization. “I didn’t want to be a shop assistant anymore,” he says. “I decided to look for the pink-headed duck. So I did, and I’ve been after it ever since.”

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Unravelling the mystery of how the pink-headed duck got its hue: Scientists discover the cause of the game bird's colouring 67 YEARS after it became extinct

The last living pink-headed duck is was seen in the wild in 1949 in India

While other birds have pink feathers no other game birds have them

Scientists studied a stuffed specimen from the Smithsonian Museum

They found a pigment seen in flamingos was responsible for the colour 

By RUSS SWAN FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 23:02, 27 January 2016 | UPDATED: 23:46, 27 January 2016

A stuffed duck with unusual pink feathers around its head has been used to solve a puzzle about how the extinct species of bird got its vivid plumage.

The pink-headed duck is thought to have died out 67 years ago, leaving scientists baffled about how it developed the distinctive colouration that earned the bird its name.

While some birds such as flamingos are known to be pink due to the large quantities of red and blue-green algae they consume, how the pink-headed duck got its colour was a mystery.

Scientists used the 68-year-old stuff remains of a pink-headed duck (pictured top) to work out what is responsible for the animal's vivid plumage around its head (close up bottom left). Scientists found natural pigments called carotenoids (illustrated in the graph bottom right) were responsible for the distinct pink colour

Now scientists have used a stuffed specimen that has been held by the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC, for 68 years to solve the puzzle.

They used an advanced non-destructive testing method known as Raman spectroscopy to examine the bird's feathers.

They found the ducks, which were endemic to the Gangetic plains of India and Bangladesh, used the same organic pigments - carotenoids - as flamingos to produce their pink plumage. 

The only other duck to be found to have these carotenoids is in the feathers of the tiny 'ear' spots of Australia's Pink-eared Duck – an animal which is otherwise entirely black, brown, and white.

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'If you turned around and saw a pink-headed duck it would be like seeing... Elvis Presley'

By Kent and Sussex Courier | Posted: January 16, 2015

By Sarah Ward A BIRDWATCHER from Crowborough will embark on his fifth trip to Burma this week in memory of a friend who shared his dream of finding a bird believed to be extinct since the 1960s.

Richard Thorn, 51, who visited the country last January on his quest to find a pink-headed duck deemed "probably extinct", will leave on Friday to continue his search which began 16 years ago.

He will visit the town of Shwegu, in Burma's Kachin State in memory of his friend Tony Htin Hla, chairman of The Biodiversity and Nature Conservation Association, who believed the ducks may still be living in lakes bordering the town before his death from liver cancer.

Mr Thorn, an ambulance care assistant, said: "Last time I went was about one year ago – the area we went to had never been surveyed before because it was so remote.

"My theory is if you have one wetland that somebody says they saw a pink-headed duck, if you look there and don't find it, it doesn't mean it is extinct.

"Let's say it is not there, for safety reasons it could have relocated but it is a totally different thing – it means everyone is looking in the wrong place."

Mr Thorn first started his quest when working at Hoopers department store in Tunbridge Wells.

He visited Tunbridge Wells library on a lunch break and picked up a book, which described the fabled bird.


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