Mallard

The mallard is the duck most people picture when they think of a duck. It is a medium-sized waterbird, about 50 to 65 centimetres long, that paddles happily on lakes, ponds, rivers, and marshes. You can spot mallards on wild wetlands and in busy city parks alike.

It is easy to tell a boy mallard from a girl. The male, called a drake, has a glossy green head, a white ring around his neck, and a yellowy-orange bill. The female is a soft speckled brown all over, which helps her stay hidden when she sits on her nest. Both have a bright blue patch on the wing edged with white.

Mallards belong to a group called dabbling ducks. Instead of diving all the way under, they tip forward with their heads down and their tails pointing up to the sky, reaching for food in the shallow water below. They will eat almost anything they find: seeds, water plants, roots, insects, snails, and worms.

Mallards live across a huge part of the world, all around the northern half of the globe and in some places in the south too. Ducks that nest in cold northern lands fly south when winter comes so they can find open, unfrozen water, then travel back again in spring.

There are more than seventeen million grown mallards in the world, so this duck is not in danger and has been listed as least concern for a long time. Mallards are so good at living near people that they turn up in many towns and cities. Even so, they still need clean lakes, ponds, and wetlands where they can feed, nest, and raise their fluffy ducklings.