Happy Easter

Time for some new yellow goslings.

And pink peach blossoms. Click to enlarge.

Time for more rabbits.

And a bunch of fuzzy ducklings. Easter time.

Despite everything, spring continues to unfold. And Easter Sunday has arrived on schedule. Here's an apt quote from Ending Easter (Amazing Adventures of Harry Moon), by         Mark Andrew Poe: 

 “Even without church walls, or doors or sconces, Easter had come. Even without altars or crosses, Easter had come” 

A Duck Walks Into A Bar

There are lots of cool ducks in the coastal waters of New Jersey and New York these days, like this gang of male northern shovelers, Anas clypeata, that I saw at Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge this week. Click to enlarge.

Here are some canvasback ducks, Aythya valisineria,  with a a photo-bombing northern pintail, Anas acuta, star of last week's blog, heading left near the margin. These were at Forsythe last week, but I've been seeing canvasbacks in the Delaware River lately, too.

The ducks above are wild ducks of course, but they reminded me of this story that features their barnyard cousins. 

It's by Garrison Keillor, from Truckstop and Other Lake Wobegon Stories: 

“He takes a kitchen chair and sits in the yard and all the ducks come around. He holds up the cheese curls in one hand and caramel popcorn in the other and his audience looks up and he tells them a joke. He says: So one day a duck come into this bar and ordered a whiskey and a bump and the bartender was pretty surprised, he says, "You know we don't get many of you ducks in here." The duck says, "At these prices I'm not surprised.* And he tosses out the popcorn and they laugh. 'Wak wak wak wak wak. I was shot in the leg in the war.' Have a scar? 'No thanks, I don't smoke.”

And here's a portrait of a handsome male mallard duck,
Anas platyrhynchos.

Dabbling Ducks

A few pairs of dabbling ducks. Dabblers do not dive to feed. Instead, they tip over at the water surface with their heads underwater and their tails in the air.

Blue-winged teal, Anas discors. The male has a distinctive white crescent on the face. Click to enlarge. 

Northern shoveler ducks, Anas clypeata, famous for the large bill. The colorful male is on the right and behind the relatively drab but equally big-beaked female. 

The familiar mallard duck, Anas platyrhynchos. The green-headed male has a clear yellow bill. 

If you like this blog, you can follow it by clicking one of the two options at the right and down a bit, "Followers" or "Facebook Blog Trail." ;-)

Duck Romance

On the left, a male black duck. On the right, a female mallard. 

The duck couple I wrote about two weeks ago was mating on the pond in Brooklyn Bridge Park again today, Sunday, March 10, 2013. Click here for the previous blog.   

I photographed some of their courtship postures last time. Today I took a few shots of copulation, which is brief and happens in the water. They ended their courtship displays with mutual head-pumping. Then she extended her head and got low and flat in the water.

The male stepped onto the female's back. If you click on the photo to enlarge it, you can see her head below the surface. 

Grabbing her neck or feathers helps him keep his balance. 

He maneuvered his tail under hers to make genital contact. Above water we see a single thrust. 

It was over in moments. He stepped off. She floated up.  

She enjoyed some post-copulatory splashing. 

Ta Da! 

Duck Date

Last February I wrote about a pair of interesting puddle ducks I saw in Brooklyn Bridge Park. Click here for that blog. She was a mallard, Anas platyrhynchos. He was an American black duck, Anas rubripes. She would normally mate with a green-headed male mallard duck. But they appeared to be a couple. 

I think I saw the same pair in the same spot today.  

This is the female mallard duck. Both genders of mallard have conspicuous white borders on the blue patch of wing feathers called the speculum.

This is the male black duck. His plumage is subdued compared to the famous green-headed mallards.  His speculum does not have a white border. Click on this to see the male mallard in a previous blog. 

When I came upon the pair today, they were performing courtship displays. She had her neck extended and was lying low in the water. He was swimming around her, pumping his head up and down. 

Courtship postures. 

He stepped onto her back briefly, they mated in the water, and then he hopped off. He flapped his wings and raised his body in a splashy post-copulatory display. Then he paddled to the shore to nibble at plants and preen. The female dashed around the pond for about ten minutes of post-copulatory splashing. 

When the celebration is over, she may lay eggs, and hatch some hybrid chicks with a combination of mallard and black duck features.  

It's Mallard Courtship Time!

The temperature was below freezing in Brooklyn last night for the first time since last winter. This morning a cold wind is shaking dry leaves on trees outside my window. Bird courtship is not the first thing that comes to mind. But if you dress warmly and go to the local park pond you will find male mallard ducks in shiny breeding plumage. They are courting females now!

The male mallard has an iridescent green head, a narrow white neck ring, a chestnut-brown breast, a black rump, light gray under-parts, and a white-bordered violet-blue speculum (the brightly colored stripe near the trailing edge of the wing). His bill is greenish yellow. The female is light mottled brown overall with a darker brown line through the eye, a dark brown streak on the crown, and an orange bill splotched with black. Males and females have dark eyes and orange legs and feet. They are about two feet long, have wings that open to about three feet, and weigh a few pounds.

Mallards begin choosing mates and forming couples as early as September and will keep it up all winter until it is time to lay eggs in spring. Groups of males gather around females and perform ritualized behaviors competitively, showing off their feathers and fitness, sometimes performing the same moves simultaneously or sequentially.

Click here to see a video of some of what they do. In the video, one male rises from the water arching his neck in a display called the grunt-whistle (he makes distinctive sounds with the posture). Two ducks in the upper right simultaneously dip their bills and raise their tails in the down-up display. Another performs the sexy tail-shake. A little brown female swims into the lower right of the picture at the end of the clip; it's all for her.


The movements are performed in just a few seconds, so knowing what to look for makes it easier to see. Here’s a link to an old scientific publication that contains drawings of eight mallard displays --  click here and then scroll down to the illustrations. A duck will often perform a preliminary head-shake or tail-shake before doing one of the more elaborate displays. Good luck peeking in on mallard sex lives!

Mallards

Mallard ducklings, Anas platyrhynchos.

A bundle of fuzzy ducklings is probably not the first thing that you picture when you think of New York City's Central Park. This group was resting in the grass by a pond about half a block from the Plaza Hotel.

The mother mallard kept an eye on me while I took photos. 



The ducklings' father may have been among the group of males loafing on the muddy banks of the pond, but he has no responsibility for rearing the youngsters. It's all up to her.

The male mallard has a shiny green head, chestnut breast, silvery wing feathers, and yellow bill.


Surprisingly -- like that guy in the Enzyte commercial -- male ducks have sexual secrets that people (mainly ornithologists) talk about.

To begin with, male ducks, along with their pond mates the geese and swans and a small selection of other kinds of birds, have penises. Most birds do not; they just have single multi-function openings called cloacae that can eliminate waste or transfer sperm at need. Ducks keep their penises discretely tucked inside their bodies when not in use.

But ducks not only have penises -- some of them are famous for having extravagant penises shaped like corkscrews and of disproportionate length. Even the New York Times has written about the Argentine Lake Duck's body-length penis. Scholarly publications describe that duck's sexual behavior as promiscuous and boisterous.

And not only that! During breeding season male mallards often chase females (other than their mates) in pursuit of forced copulations that some ornithologists call "duck rape."

We tend not to pay too much attention to mallard ducks because they are so common. Maybe we should be keeping an eye on them.

There is more information about urban birds in my book, A Field Guide to Urban Wildlife of North America, which will be published by Stackpole Books in spring 2011.