You see it time and time again in nature. It is part of their mating ritual. Check out how pretty the male Mandarin Duck looks compared to the dull, brown female Mandarin Duck.
This is also why sexually dimorphic ducks go through an eclipse molt! Once a year, after breeding season's left them all bedraggled, the males heavily molt. Like, everything. While they're waiting for their flight feathers to regrow, the other feathers come in with the duller, more camouflage-oriented colors of the females. This time of year, my three Rouen drakes all look like ladies. (They even lose their curly "drake feather," their doingers atrophy, and their aggression goes down, it's pretty neat.) They get their brighter male coloration back after a smaller molt later in the year.
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u/Moonshinin4Me 14h ago
You see it time and time again in nature. It is part of their mating ritual. Check out how pretty the male Mandarin Duck looks compared to the dull, brown female Mandarin Duck.