Fancy Ducks

BirdNote^®

Fancy Ducks

Written by Bob Sundstrom

This is BirdNote!

[Mallards and Green-winged Teal, calling and quacking]

Take a walk around any local pond or lake in late November, and you’ll find ducks in their most brilliant breeding colors. The male or drake Mallards [Mallards] sparkle their greenest on their heads and necks, and their bills are now golden yellow. Green-winged Teal males are at full luster [Green-winged Teal], every detail of their complex plumage precisely delineated. Male Northern Shovelers [Northern Shovelers] have regained their deep emerald head-feathers and rich brown flanks.

After months of molting out of their nondescript late-summer feathers, known as “eclipse plumage,” male dabbling ducks look their finest in late fall and winter... [Mallards and Green-winged Teal, calling and quacking] …because for most ducks, this is the season of courtship and pair-bonding. Males display and chase females and fend off other males, to win a mate with whom they’ll migrate in spring to their nesting grounds. That’s a schedule quite different from the usual timetable of songbirds, which sing and court and find mates in the spring, after migrating to a nesting area.

[Mallards calling and quacking]

 I’m Michael Stein.

Support for BirdNote comes from the Cornell Lab’s Bird Academy, with online courses that share the wonder and joy of birds. More at AllAboutBirds.org.

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Calls of the ducks provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York.  Mallard recorded by A.A. Allen, Northern Shoveler and Green-winged Teal recorded by W.W.H. Gunn.
Producer:  John Kessler
Executive Producer:  Chris Peterson
© 2013 Tune In to Nature.org   November 2018/2020   Narrator: Michael Stein

ID# old: 112305MALLKOHO       duck-02b-2009-11-16-MS           duck-02c