Mallard

Voice

The classic quack-quack-quack is the female: a loud descending series of four to eight notes. The male is much quieter, giving a short, nasal, hoarse rreb and a thin whistled peeu during display. Most vocal from October to April, when courtship parties form on open water.

Identification

Large, heavily built dabbling duck. Breeding male: bottle-green head, white collar, purple-brown breast, grey body, black curled central tail feathers and a yellow bill. Female brown-streaked with a dark eye-stripe and an orange bill with a dark saddle. Both sexes show a blue, white-bordered speculum; in July and August the male resembles a female but keeps the yellow bill.

Confusion species

Gadwall is greyer and neater, with a white speculum and a steeper forehead. Female Pintail is slimmer and longer-necked. The real trap is domestic and feral stock: odd white patches, a bulky build or a piebald head mean mixed ancestry, so check speculum and bill colour first.

Habitat

Almost any fresh water: ditches, canals, ponds, gravel pits, rivers, woodland pools and city fountains. In winter also brackish water and shallow estuaries. Birds often feed at night on stubble and flooded arable land, returning to safe open water to loaf through the day.

Range and movements

Throughout Europe from Iceland to Iberia. Dutch breeders are largely sedentary and are joined in winter by large numbers from Scandinavia, the Baltic and Russia. In Spain it is a widespread breeder on freshwater lagoons, rice fields and reservoirs, with a strong influx of northern birds in winter.

• Resident
• Breeding (summer)
• Winter
• Passage
• dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

Where and when to look

Spend an hour on a town pond in January or February watching display: head-pumping, the sudden water-flicking rear-up and the tail-raise are easier to see here than anywhere. Then return in July to work through eclipse plumages, the best possible training for rarer ducks.

Conservation status

Abundant and not threatened, yet breeding numbers are falling in north-west Europe: fewer ducklings survive dried-out ditch banks, smooth revetments, predation and traffic. Genetic mixing with released and feral birds matters locally. As a wintering bird it remains as numerous as ever.