40 Fun Facts About Mallard

Researchers found that mallards on the edge of a resting flock keep half the brain awake by doing what?

Sleeping with one eye open lets a mallard at the edge of a group keep watch: the eye facing outward stays open while the other half of the brain sleeps.

The locomotive Mallard set a 126 mph record in 1938 that still stands for which type of railway engine?

Steam has never gone faster on rails: the streamlined blue engine, one of a batch named after birds, is now kept at the National Railway Museum in York.

The Peabody Duck March, in which mallards waddle to a lobby fountain, began at a hotel in which US city?

Memphis guests still gather daily at 11 a.m., when five mallards ride the elevator down from their rooftop home and cross a red carpet to a Sousa march.

In the picture book Make Way for Ducklings, a mallard family settles in the Public Garden of which city?

Boston now has a bronze statue of the mother and her eight ducklings in the same garden, and in the story a policeman stops traffic so the family can cross.

Drake Mallard is the ordinary suburban alter ego of which cartoon superhero, first seen on television in 1991?

Darkwing Duck shares a quiet suburban house with his adopted daughter Gosalyn, and his civilian name parodies Kent Allard, alter ego of the pulp hero The Shadow.

Almost every breed of domestic duck descends from the mallard, apart from those bred from which other species?

Muscovy breeds come from a separate wild species native to the Americas; every other farmyard duck, whatever its colour or shape, is a mallard underneath.

The loud, descending run of quacks that most people think of as a duck's call comes from which mallards?

Adult females give the classic call, often two to ten quacks in a row that fade in volume, while drakes make a quieter, raspier sound.

The animated film Migration follows a mallard family flying from a New England pond to which Caribbean island?

Jamaica is the goal of nervous father Mack Mallard, voiced by Kumail Nanjiani, whose family detours through New York City on the way south.

Dutch curator Kees Moeliker won which tongue-in-cheek science award in 2003 for a paper on odd mallard behaviour?

Ig Nobel Prize fame earned Moeliker the nickname "the Duck Guy", and Dead Duck Day is still marked every 5 June in memory of the bird in his paper.

Which process makes newly hatched mallard ducklings fix on their mother and follow her wherever she goes?

Imprinting keeps ducklings close for warmth and protection while they learn where to feed, and Konrad Lorenz made it famous with goslings that trailed after his boots.

Mallards feed by tipping tail-up to reach plants underwater; which word describes ducks that feed this way?

Dabbling ducks rarely go fully under: they skim the surface or up-end in the shallows, and mallards prefer water less than a metre deep.

A thin ring of which colour separates the drake mallard's glossy green head from its brown chest?

White forms the drake's neat collar, but he wears it for only part of the year: after breeding he moults into a mottled brown coat much like his mate's.

Which naturalist gave the mallard its scientific name in the 1758 tenth edition of Systema Naturae?

Carl Linnaeus actually named the bird twice in the same book, and in 1906 the name printed on the earlier page was ruled the valid one.

The mallard's species name, platyrhynchos, comes from Ancient Greek words describing which feature of the bird?

A broad bill is what the Greek platys and rhunkhos spell out, while the genus name in front of it, Anas, is simply the Latin word for duck.

What is the name of the glossy purple-blue patch on a mallard's wing, shown by both sexes?

Speculum patches differ from one duck species to the next, so the colour and its border help birders tell a female mallard from other brown ducks.

After breeding, a drake mallard moults into a drab, female-like coat that birders call by which name?

Eclipse plumage hides the drake's bright colours for a month or more in late summer, and his plain yellow bill is then the easiest way to pick him out.

Like other ducks, a preening mallard spreads oil over its feathers from a gland found on which part of the body?

Base of the tail is where the oil gland sits: the bird rubs its bill and head against it, then works the oil through its plumage and even onto its legs.

The mallard's native range covers North America, Europe, Asia and the northern edge of which other continent?

Africa is home to native mallards only along its northern fringe, in places such as Morocco, though people have since released the species on several other continents.

Which US state restricts keeping pet mallards by law, to stop them crossbreeding with its native mottled duck?

Florida fears mallard genes could swamp its own mottled duck, a bird that lives year-round in the centre and south of the state.

Crossbreeding with feral mallards is a serious threat to the koloa, a duck found only in which island group?

Hawaiian Islands wetlands are the only home of the koloa maoli, or native duck, and birds free of mallard ancestry now survive mainly on Kauaʻi.

Which mammal is the most prolific natural predator of adult mallards, often catching hens as they sit on nests?

Red fox raids fall hardest on brooding birds, which nest on the ground with only their speckled camouflage to hide them.

Hot summers and falling water levels can trigger mass die-offs of mallards from which form of bacterial poisoning?

Botulism strikes when warm, shrinking pools let Clostridium bacteria multiply, and the ducks then take in the toxin the microbes produce.

In 2019 an abandoned mallard duckling in Wisconsin was raised by a pair of which fish-eating diving birds?

Loons normally chase mallards off their territory, which made this pair's weeks of care for a stray duckling so unexpected.

In 2017, mallards in Romania surprised scientists by hunting and eating which unexpected prey?

Small songbirds, a grey wagtail and a black redstart, were seized as the fledglings landed on the water: the first record of mallards hunting large vertebrates.

A study comparing London mallards with those in rural Cornwall found that the city ducks did what?

The London birds quacked more loudly and more often, a kind of regional accent that helps their calls carry over constant city noise.

Mallard hens have been known to grow a drake's plumage after damage to which part of the body?

Ovaries that are damaged or stop working can trigger a spontaneous sex reversal, a change seen now and then in birds whose two sexes look different.

Despite being among the world's most hunted ducks, the mallard sits in which IUCN Red List category?

Least Concern is the Red List's lowest-risk rating: the mallard ranges right across the Northern Hemisphere and still numbers in the millions.

In the Northern Hemisphere, mallards usually pair up in which season, months before the female lays her eggs?

Autumn pairing, typically in October and November, means mallard courtship can be watched right through the cold months, long before any nest is built.

What does a drake mallard usually do once the female has laid her eggs and begun to incubate them?

The drake deserts his mate to join other males and moult, leaving her alone to hatch the clutch and raise the ducklings.

Once incubation begins, a female mallard lines the nest and covers the eggs with which soft material?

Down from her own breast is plucked only after incubation starts; before that she lines the foot-wide nest with grasses, leaves and twigs from nearby.

Which breed descended from the mallard makes up more than half of all ducks raised for meat in the United States?

Pekin ducks arrived from China in the nineteenth century and soon pushed aside the dark-feathered Cayuga, whose leftover fluff showed on a plucked bird.

The Rouen, a heavy domestic duck coloured almost exactly like a wild mallard, was first bred in which country?

France bred it before the nineteenth century, and Rouen ducklings can be told from wild ones by a second dark stripe running under the eye.

Which domestic duck descended from the mallard stands erect like a penguin and never waddles or flies?

Indian Runner ducks run instead: their legs are set far back on the body, which gives the upright stance, and the breed reached Britain from Southeast Asia in the nineteenth century.

Call ducks, a tiny domestic breed descended from the mallard, were originally kept for which job?

Luring wild birds into traps was the work of these noisy little decoys, whose piercing, far-carrying voice gave the breed its name.

Make Way for Ducklings, Robert McCloskey's mallard picture book, won which American award for illustration in 1942?

Caldecott Medal judges honoured pictures that McCloskey drew in charcoal and had printed in warm sepia, a break from the usual look of children's books of the day.

A lone mallard nicknamed Trevor became a celebrity in 2018 on which Pacific island with no ponds or streams?

Niue has no surface fresh water, so the duck lived in a roadside puddle that the local fire service topped up whenever it began to dry out.

Which Pulitzer-winning cartoonist drew the two mallards on the first US Federal Duck Stamp in 1934?

Ding Darling designed it at Franklin D. Roosevelt's request, and that year took charge of the federal bureau that grew into the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Fellows of which Oxford college parade with flaming torches once a century in search of a legendary mallard?

All Souls last held the hunt in 2001, led by a Lord Mallard carried in a chair, and the next is not due until 2101.

Stuttgart, known as the Rice and Duck Capital of the World, hosts a world duck-calling contest in which US state?

Arkansas rice fields draw huge numbers of waterfowl along the Mississippi Flyway, and the Thanksgiving-week festival even crowns a Queen Mallard.

Which obsolete collective noun, listed in the Collins English Dictionary, means a flock of mallards?

Sord also served as a verb in older English, meaning to ascend in the air, a fitting root for a word about ducks on the wing.