Bird of the Month

JOHN MCEWEN on the rapacious drake and its dowdy and downtrodden mate Illustrated by CARRY AKROYD

WHEN WE SAY to children ‘Let’s feed the ducks’, we invariably mean the mallard ( Anser platyrhynchos, flat-billed). A duck appears in a children’s book and we go ‘quack quack’, meaning the mallard; other duck species do not quack, and the female mallard quacks loudest. That famous sporting naturalist Lord Grey, Foreign Secretary 1905–16, had a low opinion of the bird. ‘Beautiful as the drakes are in their season, they have a coarse appearance among other kinds of waterfowl. The females especially are common and underbred in appearance and vulgar in manner. They are clever at finding the food that is meant for choicer birds… I endeavour, therefore, to exclude them,’ he wrote of his waterfowl collection at Fallodon in Northumberland ( The Charm of Birds). ‘Bottom feeders!’ exclaimed my nephew with disgust when I said how exceptionally good mallard are to eat. True, they often up-end to feed in water but, as Lord Grey found, they enjoy almost everything – even, it has been recorded, a live sparrow.

Their rough behaviour is also undeniable. Another great countryman and Northumberland dignitary, the late Peregrine Fairfax, bred mallard and it was an eye-opener to see the rapacity of the drakes in his pen. Chaucer described ‘the drake, stroyere of his owene kind’ ( The

Parlement of Foules). Any city park during the breeding season will show drakes in relentless pursuit of a duck. If the duck is swimming, the weight of a gang of rapacious drakes can drown it. Mrs Beeton considered the murderous drake an urban problem: ‘It is to be regretted that domestication has seriously deteriorated the moral character of the duck. In a wild state, he is a faithful husband, desiring but one wife’ ( Household Management).

The mallard has generated twenty officially recognised ‘farmyard’ breeds since the 14th century, among them the aylesbury and khaki campbell. Donald Duck, too, it must be said. Its omnivorous appe- tite is matched by its nesting adaptability. Typically a ground nester, as the duck’s brown camouflage declares, it is capable of nesting in trees and on buildings, which can be a long way from water. The duck shepherds the ducklings to relative aquatic safety after they have sometimes dropped from a great height (eg 150ft from Canada House, Trafalgar Square). The female, in common with only five per cent of birds, has sole parental responsibility.

The mallard is a favourite and elusive quarry. Centuries-old domestication has done nothing to diminish the right to its old name ‘wild duck’, as every twilit wildfowler knows. ‘By day he will eat from any person’s hand; in the evening he returns to his ancient wary habit,’ wrote W H Hudson ( Birds and Green Places). John Masefield also knew that mysterious transformation:

Eager. Eager. Flying. Over the globe of the moon, Over the wood that glows. Wings linked. Necks a-strain, A rush and a wild crying.

A cry of the long pain In the reeds of a steel lagoon, In a land that no man knows. ( From ‘The Wild Duck’)