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Male Mallard Duck

Anas platyrhynchos

Description:

A dabbling duck which breeds throughout the temperate and subtropical Americas, Europe, Asia, and North Africa, and has been introduced to New Zealand, Australia, Peru, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, the Falkland Islands and South Africa. This duck belongs to the subfamily Anatinae of the waterfowl family Anatidae. The male birds (drakes) have a glossy green head and are grey on wings and belly, while the females have mainly brown-speckled plumage. Mallards live in wetlands, eat water plants and small animals, and are gregarious. This species is the ancestor of most breeds of domestic ducks.

Habitat:

The mallard is widely distributed across the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, North America from southern and central Alaska to Mexico, the Hawaiian Islands, and across Eurasia, from Iceland and southern Greenland and parts of Morocco (North Africa) in the west, Scandinavia to the north, and to Siberia, Japan, and China in the east, Australia and New Zealand in the Southern hemisphere.[14] It is strongly migratory in the northern parts of its breeding range, and winters farther south. For example, in North America, it winters south to Mexico, but also regularly strays into Central America and the Caribbean between September and May.

Notes:

Image taken by me at a pond in Sacramento with a Cannon digital camera.

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4 Comments

JoshuaGSmith
JoshuaGSmith 9 years ago

No problem. Canon is an excellent brand.

BuddyForHire
BuddyForHire 9 years ago

Oh and thank you for liking my pictures XD

BuddyForHire
BuddyForHire 9 years ago

I used a Cannon. Yeah I still need to do that. Been a busy day lol.

JoshuaGSmith
JoshuaGSmith 9 years ago

I like your photography BuddyForHire! If you don't mind me asking, what camera do you use? Also, if you did a simple Google search on the names of your spottings, you could find the scientific names and get off of the unidentified list.

BuddyForHire
Spotted by
BuddyForHire

Sacramento, California, USA

Spotted on Jan 8, 2015
Submitted on Jan 9, 2015

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