Mallard

This species is not so often found in swift water as are the merganser and red-breasted merganser.

Mallard, Anas platyrhynchus platyrhynchus Linnaeus.

Other names, Gray Mallard, Wild Duck.

Description, male, head and neck rich glossy green with violet reflections, neck with striking white collar, back and wings gray, speculum violet bordered with black and white, rump and upper and under tail coverts black, tail feathers whitish, breast rich glossy chestnut, sides gray, finely barred, belly white, bill yellow, feet bright pink.

Female, mottled and streaked all over with grayish brown, speculum as in male, bill dull greenish yellow, feet dull pink.

But I don't see why...

And maybe this is just, this is just me, this ain't nobody else or Troy or Addison or, I think we just leave it to the four Mallards, the four males, the Drakes.

Knock the females out where you can't shoot a female for, let's do it three years.

Like they do the pin, they're doing the pintail push right now and see what that does.

So, let's pull up this.

I'm going to ask you a question.

I already know your answer probably, but As we look again, the Mallards down 11% from last year.

Gadwall down 3%.

End of section 5.

Section 6 of Bird Notes of an East Coast Naturalist by Arthur Henry Patterson This LibriVox recording is in the public domain Bird Notes Part 6 Watching Wild Ducks This title may be slightly misleading, for the remarks that follow deal simply with the local habits of a certain few species.

It would be difficult enough to attempt anything dealing with the general habits of these palmipedes, for whole volumes have been devoted to describing the life history of our British ducks.

To my mind, the most interesting of the local ducks is the common scoter, whose presence here offshore corresponds only with the advent and continuation of the severest weather.

To hear the worn-out gunners discourse upon the weather and the wild fowl of old days, one might suppose that of late winters have deteriorated in the matter of frost and snow, instead of occasional winters being severe as ever, with others open and mild between.

It is natural they should, with that privilege allowed to increasing age, go on from imagining to believing that the old was altogether so different from the new.

Still, wild ducks in ordinary seasons are scarcer, and there may be even something in the statement that since the decoys fell into disuse, wild fowl have fallen off in numbers, the feeding, the privacy, and other circumstances having also become matters of the past.

In the old days, said a gunner to me, the ice formed on Braden four or five inches thick in as many days.

But I've heard of some clubs that have cut back that you can take.

I know one that's in my area, a legacy club, very historic place, that you can take as many guns in there as you want, but you can only shoot 24 Mallards.

That's it.

So if you take a big group in there, and sometimes they'll have some groups of eight guns, but that equates to three Mallards a man, you know, simple math.

So you have seen some people throttle back.

Uh, you know, we obviously see a lot of people with time restrictions they put on themselves.

And what the U.S.

Fish and Wildlife Service keeps up with is a statistic called active duck hunter.

Weird stuff.

He bought a Mallard duck t-shirt.

Just a t-shirt with a duck on it.

So we call him Mallard sometimes.

I

like that.

Weird stuff.

He bought a Mallard duck t-shirt.

Just a t-shirt with a duck on it.

So we call him Mallard sometimes.

I

like that.

That's kind of what we expected with a string of dry years together.

Mallards are down again.

Pentels are down.

But I didn't put a report together to share with you guys.