One of the biggest challenges with birding in the UK for me is the number of non-native bird species. It's not like Canada doesn't have non-native birds, but I don't think we have them at the same level as in the UK. Having colonised so much of the world, I get the impression that it became common practice for people to bring back species of various flora and fauna to either add to collections of things they found interesting or beautiful, or they were brought for experimentation--the plants, mainly, for creating hybrids and varieties suitable for the climate here. With the way the Merlin bird ID app works, you have to download a regional map depending on where you are so that Merlin has a better chance of guessing what your bird is. There is no "globe" option, meaning that the app won't search the entire world for you. That means that many non-native species here are hard for me to ID. Some that have been bred and become part of local ecosystems will be included in these regional maps and some bird ID books for the UK, but some are part of what are called "collections," as I mentioned above. This means that there might be a few of them just for something fun to see, almost zoo animals, but not to really breed and form new, thriving populations.
The Australian wood duck is one of these. I did already know that St James's Park has a lot of unique birds, mainly that were gifted to the royal family. If they haven't bred here, they've be brought over so that there is always that particular bird in that park, even if it's just 1 breeding pair to kind of keep a small population going. The photo here is one that I took back in August or so, but it wasn't until recently that I gave in and joined another bird group on Facebook, this time one that is specifically for help ID'ing birds and not just a sharing site for bird lovers. Anyway, since joining that group, I've solved any mystery birds I have. I'm thankful that there is always at least one person that can ID a bird from somewhere else, so as of March 2021, I now know what this beautiful bird is that I saw in October 2020. I can't complain about a 5-month knowledge deficit. It took me 6 years to learn what birds I had been seeing when I lived in Mexico (turkey vultures), and it was maybe 20+ years for me to learn what bird I had always heard in the trees at my grandparents' farm (white-throated sparrow)!
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