whatdouthink
Well-known member
Hello all. Hope all you bird watchers are doing well. I have a question about Mallard behavior. For background, I live in a Mallard intense community near Syracuse NY. There is one pond in the middle of the town, a creek, and (sort of) a canal that meanders through the town and also runs the length of my backyard. Early summer a female mallard and 9 (now 8) ducklings started to hang in the backyard. I left them alone and didn't feed them for about a month (so they wouldn't imprint on me). But once they were a bit larger I started to spend some time near them and fed them some Kale, veggies & some bird feed. I also placed a small dog pool near where I give them treats. They got used to me & now associate my knocking on an interior window with food & usually emerge from the disgusting (runoff, etc) canal to get their snack. I have questions about 2 behaviors of the mom. The first is why she does not eat with the ducklings. She appears to be standing guard. Since the area does have predators (hawks, snapping turtle, etc) it's understandable she watches over the ducklings but surprising that she never partakes. The other odd thing is that she stands between the ducklings and the canal rather than between me and the ducklings. Perhaps she's sized up risks and views the risk of a high flying hawk or a snapping turtle emerging from the canal as greater than any risk I might impose but she seems poorly positioned to protect her ducklings. Perhaps standing away from the ducklings increases the odds that a hawk will see only her and not the ducklings thus she serves as a sort of decoy......anyone know or wish to speculate about these behaviors? Thanks for any information or musings you can offer.