On Ducks

Notice: This is a birding post.

Thing the First

The first thing to know about ducks is that they aren’t DUCKS.

I grew up with this mental picture of duck = mallard. Heck, I even participated in a dog hunting event where I sat behind a blind with a giant slingshot and catapulted ducks into the air for dogs to retrieve. (The dogs who came up to say hello and oh hey by the way can I have one of THESE ducks? That other duck is so golly gee gosh darned far away it would be super if you’d just let me have one, and I’ll give you a tail wag and a lick on the face for payment were SOOO adorable and so very, very missing the point of the exercise. I still think they should have gotten points for creatively finding ducks, even if it wasn’t the duck they were SUPPOSED to find.)

Right. Anyway. Mallards? Are the male of exactly one species of duck.

A very successful duck, to be certain! But I felt my world-view shifting the first time I identified a Northern Shoveler. Not entirely unlike a mallard, but different enough to be suspiciously not-mallard, even to my untrained eyes. This, dear readers, was the moment when I had to stop and ask myself how many times I’d dismissed a lake full of ducks as “ducks” without ever realizing that some of those “ducks” might, in fact, have hilariously oversized beaks.

Then I saw a Bufflehead, and the world-view shifting did a couple of loop-de-loops just for funsies.

I adore Buffleheads. Steven and I have discussed making pokemon teams from our life list, and the Bufflehead will always be on mine. It’s like a crossbreed of a duck, a panda, and a puffin. They’re STUNNING and incredibly flashy and nothing at all like a mallard.

They’re also one of the most common ducks we’ve seen since we’ve started birding.

How? HOW could I possibly have missed this?! It’s not even CLOSE to a mallard. It’s not even CAMOFLAUGED. It basically SCREAMS to the viewer that it’s a special non-mallard duck and yet I’d never even registered its existence before.

This is one reason I love Buffleheads.

The other reason is that they’re adorable.

The final reason is that their name is as adorable as they are. Say it once. Bufflehead.

See? You smiled a little, didn’t you?

Thing The Second

Male mallards have iridescent green heads.

Many, many people have reported seeing blue or even purple-headed mallards. In pretty much every case, they are dismissed because the iridescent sheen can look blue in certain lights.

In only ONE case have I seen someone say that well MAYBE a mallard with a blue head isn’t producing enough testosterone to create the yellow necessary to generate green. Or something. I dunno. It was a very science-y post and I got distracted.

Anyway, I have photos of a purple-headed mallard. Please compare to this photo of a normal, green-headed mallard. And for funsies, this bibbed domesticated mallard that we found hanging out with a pack of normal mallards like it weren’t no thang.

All I know is that they don’t count as different birds. (Well, the bibbed domesitcated does. He may have been bred from domesticated stock, but he was clearly doing very well in the wild, so in my eyes that counts as a sighting. If wild-found parakeets count, this duck does too, by golly.)

Thing The Third

Ducks are weird.

Like, seriously. Let’s look at Grebes, shall we?

There’s the Pied-Billed Grebe, who is this awesome, tiny, submarine of a duck. You’ll see this teensy fellow scooting across the top of the water, where but one moment ago there existed no duck at all.

Most likely, it’s going to look like the smallest Loch Ness Monster ever, with a cute arch of a face and a graceful hump of a back. If you’ve got binoculars on you, you’ll note the black spot on the pale bill, the frill of feathers at the back, and perhaps the pale patch on the rump.

Then? The bird will be gone. (ACTION SHOT: mid-submarine disappearance)

It did not fly away. It was there just a second ago, and now it’s gone. Poof. Vanished.

… sometimes for up to 30 minutes.

And then, quietly and without fanfare, there it is again.

So that’s the most common grebe we’ve seen. It’s drab. Cute, even.

Then? You have the other Grebes we’ve seen, who look like drugged-out rejects from a Muppet convention. Like the Horned Grebe.

It’s like a macaroni penguin after years of hard drug use.

Thing the Final

I saw a mallard in the parking lot at work today and I think it’s the first time I’ve noticed just how CONFUSED they look. He was waddling aimlessly from side to side, nervously eyeing everything and mutter-quacking to himself as if to say, “How did I even GET here? This doesn’t look like a pond. Is this a pond? I don’t think this is a pond. Oh dear, oh dear, oh heavens me, I was supposed to be at a POND. Now what do I do?”

And I kind of want to give him a hug, a cookie, and directions.

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