AllAfrica.com, Washington – 15 hours ago
Mallards Bite Off More Than They Can Chew
By Michael Givant, Email- Givant@adelphi.edu
Until last summer mallards had always seemed placid and boring. Then I began to notice a few in the condo pond where we live. In the early morning when the water’s surface was smooth as glass and shafts of yellow light fell on tall, tan reeds, some male mallards, with their distinctive green heads and yellow bills, were slowly swimming between reeds cut to water level.
They dabbed at the water sticking their heads beneath the surface and coming up with black seed balls in their bills. One took a dozen short fast bites and swallowed leaving its throat quivering. A juvenile allowed a ball to roll to the tip of its bill a few times until it finally rolled into the water. Another seemed to chomp down working the seed ball back toward its throat but it fell into the water. Yet another had a seed ball on the tip of its bill chomping down in more of a pushing manner than a chewing one. Why were they having difficulty swallowing these balls?
Now boredom had turned to curiosity about what and how they ate. Finding some seed balls attached to fallen branches on the ground, which looked exactly like those in the pond, I soaked them for a few days. The balls remained as hard and rough textured as when I had found them. How could the mallards swallow this stuff? No wonder they kept dropping the balls. I was as hooked on knowing what moves they used to swallow these balls as they were on eating them.
I watched the mallards for many hours throughout the summer. Sometimes they were at rest and other times they plucked balls from the water, dropping them back in and finally downing them. When they ate, they ate fast and determining what was a move required patience. However I noted three distinct moves when they were having difficulty swallowing: 1) A fast nip, nip, nip motion accompanied by rolling the ball back towards their throat, 2) Tilting their bills and finally 3) Jerking back their head. Any one or a combination of these moves would finally result in swallowing.
A few weeks after I thought that I had their moves down pat, two mallards showed new moves that were even more exaggerated. A green-headed male struggled so with a seed ball that I wondered if he would choke. Since ducks don’t do Heimlich maneuvers and none came to aid him, he was on his own. Opening his mouth the drake exposed a tongue, which was thinner and shorter than I expected, then shook its head vigorously side to side. No dice. Finally he pushed his head back and jerked his neck up and down quickly like a pump. Down went the seed ball. Then he looked around with nonchalance belying the difficulty he’d just had. Was he showing the others that he was the Alpha male mallard? Was he trying to attract a female with those powerful neck muscles?
Not to be outdone, a nearby female also displayed two new moves. She tilted her head slightly to one side and then to the other. Was she simply trying to ease her throat after a rough swallow? Was she showing off her appealing profile for the males? Or was she displaying to the females that she was the Alpha female?
One morning they displayed an exciting attraction that I never dreamed mallards possessed. All eleven resident mallards began to swim toward the front of the pond bypassing a frog in their path whose eyes were bulging. They didn’t all start at once but a feeding frenzy was in progress. All the mallards were plucking seedballs from the water. A female seemingly had one stuck in her throat; another with its tail up was digging deep in the water for a ball; two mallards side by side were so close and were chewing so fast that they were off focus in my birding scope. A female came up on the grass, turned around, shook her tail in a gauzy blur of white, brown and blue, then returned to the water.
Some minutes later the orgy was over. The mallards swam away having been so wrapped up in feeding, that some had weeds wrapped around their bodies, others had some dangling from their heads and one had a strand hanging around its neck like a Christmas wreath. The lone frog that had witnessed this spectacle looked shocked as they headed to shore. I was wiped out watching their frenetic exertions.
The mallards rested on shore where they would remain for a long time as their gizzards, using great pressure, crushed the seed balls. I watched, enjoying the warm sun on my face, realizing how little I knew about these birds. What I did know is that I would never think of mallards or ducks as mundane or boring again.
A year later I still have no real idea if those seed balls were a departure from their regular diet of pondweed and seeds or if their exaggerated moves were routine or an adaptation to difficult- to-swallow food. I’ve already begun to watch the few that are here. This morning one paddled toward me and came out of the water onto the grass. As it clambered onto shore, its smooth black crown and green cheeks turned to a satiny violet in the strong morning sunlight. Look at those cheek pouches! I never noticed them before. Bettcha this guy doesn’t have a problem biting off more than he can chew.
