Description

• The male of the species has the more dramatic coloring. It has a dark green head with a yellow or orange colored bill. The feathers on its body are a gray-brown color, lighter on the underside, apart from a purple-brown patch on its breast which is separated from the green head by a white collar. It also has a blue “flash” on each wing. In contrast, the female is predominantly a mottled brown color, although she too has the orange bill. The female reaches a length of 20 to 25 inches and can weight 3 pounds. It has a life expectancy of around seven years.
  
  

Diet

• The mallard is omnivorous, meaning that it eats both plants and animals. It finds these both on land and in water sources which it tends to live beside. Mallards will eat aquatic plants such as pondweed and smartweed, berries, seeds, acorns and, if available, grains such as barley and wheat. They also eat insects, insect larvae, marine invertebrates, such as mussels and crustaceans, worms and frogs.
  
  

Feeding

• Mallards will walk on land grazing on plants and seeds, much like herbivorous animals. On the water they are “dabblers” meaning that they do not dive for food, preferring to simply eat plants and animals at the surface or dipping their heads underneath the water to catch or graze food. They will upend themselves, so the front half of their body is submerged, in order to reach food at the bottom of the water source.
  
  

Variations

• Plants form the majority of the mallard's diet for most of the year. However, in spring the female will convert her diet to one predominantly consisting of aquatic invertebrates. This protein-rich diet enables her to develop the energy and nutrition that she needs to lay and incubate her eggs, which she does in late spring. Both males and females will eat more in the fall in order to build up fat reserves to see them through the colder winter months or enable them to undertake long migratory flights to warmer climes.
  
  

Being Fed

• Mallards are hardy, adaptable birds and have populated many urban areas that contain a water source. Because of their omnivorous tendencies they are able to consume many types of food that humans feed them. In areas where they are fed regularly and abundantly, the mallard will not migrate for the winter, remaining and relying on these human handouts for sustenance.