Fooled To Lay More Eggs

Mallard pair (CC BY - SA 2.5)

Mallard or wild duck (Anas platyrhynchos) is one those birds that can be fooled into laying, much beyond their normal clutch-size by removing their eggs as they are laid. In this way, mallards were fooled to lay, up to 146 eggs! Normally birds lay a clutch of 8-13 eggs.

Like many other species, females of this duck are also able to communicate with their chicks even when they are not hatched. During incubation or brooding they emit a species-specific maternal call, which unhatched ducklings listen, understand and respond. The instinct of the mother tells her, when to communicate. It starts making the call when in-embryo duck’s head projects into the airspace of the egg, about 17 to 19 days after laying. It helps ducklings to recognize the call, which they will hear in the near future after coming out of the shell.

These ducks usually form pairs (in October and November in the Northern hemisphere) only until the female lays eggs at the start of nesting season which is around the beginning of spring, at which time she is left by the male who joins up with other males to await the moulting period which begins in June (in the Northern hemisphere). During the brief time before this, however, the males are still sexually potent and some of them either remain on standby to sire replacement clutches (for female Mallards that have lost or abandoned their previous clutch) or forcibly mate with females that appear to be isolated or unattached regardless of their species and whether or not they have a brood of ducklings.

The nesting period can be very stressful for the female since she lays more than half her body weight in eggs. She requires a lot of rest and a feeding/loafing area that is safe from predators. Eggs, which are incubated for 27–28 days to hatching with 50–60 days to fledgling. The ducklings are precocial and fully capable of swimming as soon as they hatch.

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. The name mallard is derived from the Old French malart or mallart "wild drake", although its ultimate derivation is unclear.

Belonging to the subfamily Anatinae of the waterfowl family Anatidae, these birds are killed in large numbers. In 1984 alone, it was among the most commonly shot bird in the USA, when 3,954,100 mallards were killed whereas the number in the following year was 3,234,800.

Besides shooting, they also die in large number due to lead poisoning. Usually they are poisoned through anglers’ discarded or lost split-shot and shooters’ discarded shotgun pellets. These birds along with some other species of dabbling ducks are especially attracted to these pellets because they feed largely on hard, round seeds of aquatic plants, which resemble pellets. Destruction caused due to lead poisoning can well be judged by the fact that on one occasion in Illinois (USA) 110,000 mallards died because of lead poisoning.

Mallards breed 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.