With bonus birdwatching content!
“Incidental” sounds right for the eBird list type. If birdwatching wasn’t your primary activity that’s the one to use.
On the duck, if you think there was a fair amount of mallard going on, “Mallard (domestic type)” is what I would probably use. But “duck sp.”, maybe with some additional text explaining things in the observation detail, sounds perfectly fine to me. It’s really up to you. In general I like to make my checklists as specific as I reasonable can, but I don’t know much about domestic ducks, so I don’t stress about that stuff.
Good call on being careful with taking Merlin Sound ID’s suggestions as gospel. Today I was hearing a bird singing that I kind of thought sounded like a house wren, but also might have been a warbler. (There are a lot of new songs being sung these days with the arrival of spring, and I’m kind of rusty.) I tried Merlin Sound ID on it, and it suggested yellow warbler. But when I got a look at the bird it was indeed a house wren.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Reposted from https://lies.tumblr.com/post/679674446327480320.
