[023] Anas platyrhynchos, Mallard

[023] Anas platyrhynchos, Mallard

Introduction

Anas platyrhynchos is a duck so widespread, common and tame in Britain that it is generally just called a duck.

Taxonomy

Kingdom – Animals

Phylum – Chordates

Class – Aves (Birds)

Order – Anseriformes (Waterfowl and a few others)

Family – Anatidae (Waterfowl – Ducks, Geese and Swans)

Subfamily – Anatinae (Dabbling Ducks)

Genus – Anas

Scientific Name – Anas platyrhynchos

Name

The word Mallard originally referred to any drake (male duck.) Anas is Latin for ‘duck’ and platy-rhynchos means wide- or flat-billed.

Ducks

(You can always skip over my bits about taxonomy.)

In [018] the Egyptian Goose, we looked at the structure of the order Anseriformes and the family Anatidae and the two main subfamilies of ducks:

• Anatinae – Dabbling Ducks
• Aythyinae – Diving Ducks

Visually, there is not much obviously different between Dabbling Ducks (which stay on the surface and just eat what they can find near the surface) and Diving Ducks (which dive deeper below the surface) but there are morphological differences that maintain the distinction.

I will concentrate on common British species in what follows. These are now generally classified as Dabbling Ducks

• [023] Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos)
• [022] Pintail (Anas acuta)
• [022] Teal (Anas crecca)
• [225] Gadwall (Mareca strepera, formerly Anas strepera)
• [224] Wigeon (Mareca penelope, formerly Anas penelope)
• [322] Shoveler (Spatula clypeata, formerly Anas clypeata)

Diving Ducks include these:

• [047] Tufted Duck (Aythya fuligula)
• [047] Pochard (Aythya farina)
• Greater and Lesser Scaup (Aythya marila and Aythya affinis) Both fairly rare.
• [236] Red-crested Pochard (Netta rufina)

There is another subfamily, Merginae. These are all relatively rare in the UK

• [059] Goldeneye (Bucephala clangula)
• [228] Goosander (Mergus merganser)
• [228] Red-breasted Merganser (Merganser serrator)
• Smew (Mergellus albellus)
• Eider and sea ducks

Some species are still uncertain:

• [012] Mandarin (Aix galericulata)
• [061] Muscovy Duck (Cairina moschata)

A major change in 2009 followed DNA analysis, which has been the key to many sweeping changes in taxonomy. There is still not agreement as to the subfamilies I have used, or whether they are Tribes within other subfamilies.

Mallard

The Mallard doesn’t look very much like its two sister species that we met yesterday.

The male in his breeding plumage has the familiar dark green head, sometimes appearing blue or even purple.

In eclipse plumage he looks more like the female who, as for all dabbling ducks, is mottled brown in appearance.

About a dozen chicks may be reared at a time, although they rarely all survive to maturity. They have yellow heads with a marked eye stripe.

Females sometimes have different plumage patterns. I am not sure how much this due to escaped domestic birds but to some extent it is natural variation.

Habitat and use

Ducks have been farmed for thousands of years – for meat, eggs and down (soft, fine feathers used in bedding) and also as pets or as show animals. They are still seen as more of an haute cuisine species than the more mass-produced chickens and turkeys.

Almost all domestic ducks originate from the Mallard with the exception of the Muscovy Duck (and in parts of Asia the Indian Runner Duck.)

They also appear in fiction, particularly in anthropomorphised form in children’s fiction – such as Beatrix Potter and the cartoon character Donald Duck.

Other Notes

It’s hard to know how many actually wild Mallards there are in Britain because most of the ones we see are very tame. Almost all ornamental lakes have their own resident or semi-resident Mallards. They come in very close when fed bread by visitors.

See also

The origins of the domesticated breed of Aylesbury Duck are obscure but it is presumed to be descended from the Mallard. It is all white, and significantly larger than normal Mallards.

Escaped birds happily mate with wild Mallard.

I have to admit that until I wrote this, I believed that both white birds above were Aylesbury Ducks but they are not. Aylesbury Ducks are now almost extinct. They have been replaced by a similar looking Pekin Duck, also derived from Mallards, imported over a hundred years ago. It has a yellow bill while the Aylesbury Duck has a pink bill. There are now two recognized breeds of Pekin Duck, one European and one American. Pekin is yet another spelling of the name of the city we used to call Peking – now it’s Beijing.

There are several other British duck species as listed above.