Mallard Duck Habitats: Drab Female, Gaudy Male, Green Egg, Ground Nest

Summary: North American mallard duck habitats in Canada summers, Mexico winters get drab females, gaudy males from the United States' green eggs in ground nests.

female (right) and male (left) mallard ducks (Anas platyrhynchos); Flourtown, Montgomery County, southeastern Pennsylvania; April 19, 2008: Manjith Kainickara, CC BY SA 2.0 Generic, via Flickr

North American mallard duck habitats aid cultivators through the Anatidae family member's appetite for crustaceans, earthworms, insects and mollusks and hunters and naturalists through year-round distribution ranges from Canada southward into Mexico.

The mallard bears its common name and the scientific name Anas platyrhynchos as the French loan words for wild drake and the Latin for flat-nosed duck. Agro-industry, pesticides, pollution, predation, recreation, tourism and urbanization challenge round-, short-tailed mallard ducks, described in 1758 by Swedish zoologist Carl Linnaeus (May 23, 1707-Jan. 10, 1787). Arctic, subtropical or temperate, brackish, fresh- or salt-water, built or natural wetlands and sometimes open prairies draw mallards into flocks with same and territorially overlapping species.

Twenty-nine-year lifespans expect buildings, grasslands, ground-cover, tree crotches or holes and wetlands for food, nests and roosts even though mallards endure prairie potholes and roadside ditches.

February through September furnish opportunities for brooding six- to 16-egg clutches, followed by a second by feral pairs farther from North America's wild and urban interfaces.

Mothers-to-be give 4-inch- (10.16-centimeter-) deep, grass-, leaf-, reed-, sedge-lined nests inner 6- to 7-inch (15.24- to 17.78-centimeter) and outer 11- to 12-inch (27.94- to 30.48-centimeter) diameters. Nests with brown, white-centered, white-tipped down from maternal breast feathers house blue, blue-green, buff-green, gray-buff, green-tinged creamy, pale green or white, elliptical to subelliptical, waxy eggs. The last 1.97- to 2.56-inch (50- to 65-millimeter) by 1.26- to 1.77-inch (32 to 45-millimeter), smooth, unmarked egg initiates 22- to 29-day incubations for completed clutches.

Crows, eagles, falcons, fish, foxes, gulls, harriers, hawks, humans, magpies, martens, opossums, owls, raccoons, ravens, skunks, snakes, turtles and weasels jeopardize North American mallard duck habitats.

Downy nestlings hatched simultaneously from day-apart laid eggs know dark brown upper-parts, dark bill-eye-nape streaks, dark-marked ear-covert rears and yellow neck fronts and sides of heads.

Fast-functioning dark olive-brown bills, gray-brown feet and legs and open eyes quickly launch nestlings with yellow-patched back and rump sides and yellow-tipped wings into the water. Seven- to eight-week-old ducklings manage fledgling stages and yearlings with blue wing-patches, broad-based wings and white outer tail feathers, sexual maturity 47 to 48 weeks later. Adults need beetles, caddisflies, dragonflies, earthworms, fish eggs, flies, freshwater shrimp, grains, river-bottom and swamp grassy, herbaceous and tree nuts, roots, seeds and tubers, and snails.

North American mallard duck habitats up to 1,000-foot (304.8-meter) altitudes above sea level offer winter's coldest temperatures at minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 51.11 degrees Celsius).

Mallards prefer alfalfa, bushes, cattails, grasses, reeds and thickets alongside lakes, ponds, reservoirs and sloughs spring through fall and open grasslands, prairies and wetlands in winter.

Ashes, aspens, asters, baldcypresses, birches, bulrushes, cattails, cedars, cottonwoods, elms, grasses, hickories, junipers, oaks, sedges, sowthistles, sugarberries, sweetgums, sycamores, tupelos and willows qualify as camouflage vegetation. Females reveal mottled brown underparts and yellow-brown upper-parts and white neck-collared males black curly-feathered rumps, gray bodies rusty in summer and metallic heads grayer in summer. Fast, regular, shallow flight on 32.28- to 37.4-inch (82- to 95-centimeter) wingspans suggest 1.88- to 3-pound (0.85- to 1.36-kilogram), 19.5- to 2.6-inch (49.53- to 6.6-centimeter) adults.

North American mallard duck habitats transmit high-pitched courtship whistles and raspy raab calls from yellow-billed males and quack calls from dark-capped, dark-eyelined females' black-patched orange bills.

mallard duck (Anas platyrhynchos) nest with eggs; near Detroit Lake, Linn and Marion counties, northwestern Oregon; ; Sunday, May 15, 2005, 04:42:45: Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife, Public Domain, via Flickr

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

female (right) and male (left) mallard ducks (Anas platyrhynchos); Flourtown, Montgomery County, southeastern Pennsylvania; Saturday, April 19, 2008: Manjith Kainickara, CC BY SA 2.0 Generic, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/manjithkaini/2426445603/

mallard duck (Anas platyrhynchos) nest with eggs; near Detroit Lake, Linn and Marion counties, northwestern Oregon; Sunday, May 15, 2005, 04:42:45: Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife, Public Domain, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/odfw/4404568507/

For further information:

Baicich, Paul J.; and Harrison, Colin J.O. Nests, Eggs, and Nestlings of North American Birds. Second edition. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, Princeton Field Guides. 2005.

Brehm, Christian Ludwig. 1831. "4. Die grondlandische Stockente. Anas conboschas, Br. (Anas boschas, Linn.)." Handbuch der Naturgeschichte Aller Vögel Deutschlands, pages 865-866. Ilmenau, Germany: Bernh. Friedr. Voigt.
Available via MDZ (Münchener DigitalisierungsZentrum Digitale Bibliothek) Digitale Sammlungen @ http://reader.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/fs1/object/display/bsb11121761_00895.html

Grzimek's Animal Life encyclopedia, 2nd edition. Volumes 8-11, Birds I-IV, edited by Michael Hutchins, Jerome A. Jackson, Walter J. Bock and Donna Olendorf. Farmington Hills MI: Gale Group, 2002.

Linneaus, Carl. 1758. "17. Anas playrhynchos." Systema Naturae per Regna Tria Naturae, Secundum Classes, Ordines, Genera, Species, cum Characteribus, Differentiis, Synonymis, Locis, Tomus I, Editio Decima, Reformata: 125. Holmiae [Stockholm, Sweden]: Laurentii Salvii [Laurentius Salvius].
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/727030

Peterson, Alan P., M.D. "Anas platyrhynchos (Linnaeus) 1758." Zoonomen: Zoological Nomenclature Resource > Birds of the World -- Current Valid Scientific Avian Names > Anseriformes > Anatidae.
Available @ http://www.zoonomen.net/avtax/anse.html