Mallard
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40 free Mallard trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The mallard is the duck almost everyone pictures when they hear the word duck. The green-headed drake and his brown-streaked mate turn up on park ponds, rivers and marshes across much of the world. Because the bird is so familiar, it is easy to miss how odd and interesting it really is. This quiz collects the best fun facts about mallards and turns them into questions. It covers the science of how mallards feed, rest, look after their feathers and raise a brood, along with the predators and diseases they face and the surprising things researchers have caught them doing. There are also questions on the farmyard breeds that descend from the mallard, and on the mallards of picture books, cartoons, film, television, railways and one very old university tradition. It is written for bird lovers, families, teachers and pub-quiz teams. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so each question leaves you with a fact worth repeating.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Researchers found that mallards on the edge of a resting flock keep half the brain awake by doing what?
Sleeping with one eye open
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.
Q 02The locomotive Mallard set a 126 mph record in 1938 that still stands for which type of railway engine?
Steam
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.
Q 03The Peabody Duck March, in which mallards waddle to a lobby fountain, began at a hotel in which US city?
Memphis
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.
Q 04In the picture book Make Way for Ducklings, a mallard family settles in the Public Garden of which city?
Boston
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.
Q 05Drake Mallard is the ordinary suburban alter ego of which cartoon superhero, first seen on television in 1991?
Darkwing Duck
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.
Q 06Almost every breed of domestic duck descends from the mallard, apart from those bred from which other species?
Muscovy
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.
Q 07The loud, descending run of quacks that most people think of as a duck's call comes from which mallards?
Adult females
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.
Q 08The animated film Migration follows a mallard family flying from a New England pond to which Caribbean island?
Jamaica
Jamaica is the goal of nervous father Mack Mallard, voiced by Kumail Nanjiani, whose family detours through New York City on the way south.
Q 09Dutch curator Kees Moeliker won which tongue-in-cheek science award in 2003 for a paper on odd mallard behaviour?
Ig Nobel Prize
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.
Q 10Which process makes newly hatched mallard ducklings fix on their mother and follow her wherever she goes?
Imprinting
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.
Q 11Mallards feed by tipping tail-up to reach plants underwater; which word describes ducks that feed this way?
Dabbling
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.
Q 12A thin ring of which colour separates the drake mallard's glossy green head from its brown chest?
White
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.
Q 13Which naturalist gave the mallard its scientific name in the 1758 tenth edition of Systema Naturae?
Carl Linnaeus
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.
Q 21Which mammal is the most prolific natural predator of adult mallards, often catching hens as they sit on nests?
Red fox
Red fox raids fall hardest on brooding birds, which nest on the ground with only their speckled camouflage to hide them.
Q 22Hot summers and falling water levels can trigger mass die-offs of mallards from which form of bacterial poisoning?
Botulism
Botulism strikes when warm, shrinking pools let Clostridium bacteria multiply, and the ducks then take in the toxin the microbes produce.
Q 23In 2019 an abandoned mallard duckling in Wisconsin was raised by a pair of which fish-eating diving birds?
Loons
Loons normally chase mallards off their territory, which made this pair's weeks of care for a stray duckling so unexpected.
Q 14The mallard's species name, platyrhynchos, comes from Ancient Greek words describing which feature of the bird?
A broad bill
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.
Q 15What is the name of the glossy purple-blue patch on a mallard's wing, shown by both sexes?
Speculum
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.
Q 16After breeding, a drake mallard moults into a drab, female-like coat that birders call by which name?
Eclipse plumage
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.
Q 17Like other ducks, a preening mallard spreads oil over its feathers from a gland found on which part of the body?
Base of the tail
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.
Q 18The mallard's native range covers North America, Europe, Asia and the northern edge of which other continent?
Africa
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.
Q 19Which US state restricts keeping pet mallards by law, to stop them crossbreeding with its native mottled duck?
Florida
Florida fears mallard genes could swamp its own mottled duck, a bird that lives year-round in the centre and south of the state.
Q 20Crossbreeding with feral mallards is a serious threat to the koloa, a duck found only in which island group?
Hawaiian Islands
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.
Q 24In 2017, mallards in Romania surprised scientists by hunting and eating which unexpected prey?
Small songbirds
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.
Q 25A study comparing London mallards with those in rural Cornwall found that the city ducks did what?
Quacked more loudly
The London birds quacked more loudly and more often, a kind of regional accent that helps their calls carry over constant city noise.
Q 26Mallard hens have been known to grow a drake's plumage after damage to which part of the body?
Ovaries
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.
Q 27Despite being among the world's most hunted ducks, the mallard sits in which IUCN Red List category?
Least Concern
Least Concern is the Red List's lowest-risk rating: the mallard ranges right across the Northern Hemisphere and still numbers in the millions.
Q 28In the Northern Hemisphere, mallards usually pair up in which season, months before the female lays her eggs?
Autumn
Autumn pairing, typically in October and November, means mallard courtship can be watched right through the cold months, long before any nest is built.
Q 29What does a drake mallard usually do once the female has laid her eggs and begun to incubate them?
Deserts his mate
The drake deserts his mate to join other males and moult, leaving her alone to hatch the clutch and raise the ducklings.
Q 30Once incubation begins, a female mallard lines the nest and covers the eggs with which soft material?
Down from her own breast
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.