The Mallard is the default duck — the green-headed, chestnut-breasted drake and the streaky brown hen of every Michigan pond, river, and park lagoon. Familiarity hides an impressive bird: Mallards are powerful fliers clocked at 55 mph, and the hen's loud descending quack is the classic duck sound (drakes only manage a raspy whisper).
Mallards are dabblers — they tip tail-up to reach bottom vegetation rather than diving — and they're the ancestor of nearly every domestic duck breed. Hens nest in odd places, from cattail clumps to landscaped flowerbeds, then march their ducklings overland to water within a day of hatching.
Aquatic plants and seeds tipped up from the shallows, plus insects, snails, and waste grain from fields. Bread is junk food for them — cracked corn, oats, or greens are far kinder handouts.
Usually yes. The hen will walk her brood to water within a day of hatching, sometimes crossing roads. If they're headed into traffic, you can shepherd from a distance — but let her lead.
Yes — bread fills them with empty calories, fouls the water, and in growing ducklings is linked to wing deformities. If you feed at all, offer cracked corn, oats, peas, or chopped greens sparingly.
They're still there — in disguise. Drakes molt into a drab "eclipse" plumage and briefly can't fly, so they lie low. The green heads return with the fall molt.
Yes, in any month. Numbers stay fairly steady from month to month. Winter is often the easiest time to find them, with bare branches, open sightlines, and snow cover concentrating birds at reliable food.
They enter eclipse plumage. From roughly June through August, drakes molt into a drab, female-like plumage and become flightless for a few weeks while their wing feathers regrow. The yellow bill still separates them from real females, and the green head returns by early fall.
A raft on the water, a flock in the air, and a sord for Mallards specifically in old usage. Rafting is a real behavior — birds bunch together on open water to rest and watch for predators.
Other birds you might be looking at instead.
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