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Mallard | Anas platyrhynchos
Wilde eend | Ánade azulón
The Mallard is the ancestor of almost all domestic ducks. In the Caribbean truly wild, migrating birds from North America are rare winter visitors, while domestic and feral ducks of all breeds live year-round on ponds, in parks and around farms on many islands. In Cuba it is called pato inglés.
Voice
The female gives the familiar loud, descending quack-quack-quack; the male is quieter, with a soft, rasping raeb and a short whistle during display.
Recording: Esperanza Poveda — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · shortened to the first 60 s, mono · xeno-canto
Identification
50–65 cm, a large, heavy dabbling duck. The male has a glossy green head, a narrow white collar, a purplish-brown breast, a pale grey body, a black rear end with curled central tail feathers and a yellow bill. The female is mottled brown, with a dark eye-stripe and an orange bill with a dark saddle. Both sexes have a blue to purplish-blue speculum bordered with white on both sides. The male in eclipse resembles the female but has a plain yellow bill. Domestic and feral birds are often heavier and vary greatly in colour, from all white to dark with a white breast.
Confusion species
American Black Duck Anas rubripes is much darker, with a paler head, a purple speculum with no or only a narrow white border and bright white underwings. Female Gadwall Mareca strepera is smaller, with a thinner bill and a white wing patch. With individual birds, hybrids between Mallard and American Black Duck and domestic breeds must be considered.
Habitat
All kinds of fresh water: lakes, ponds, marshes, rice fields and reservoirs, and in the case of domestic birds also parks, gardens and farmyards. It dabbles and eats seeds, aquatic plants, invertebrates and food given by people.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Wild birds are a very rare winter visitor to Cuba and are otherwise reported in small numbers or irregularly in the Bahamas and the other Greater Antilles; further south they are exceptional. Domestic and feral ducks occur on many islands, and a large share of the records in the region concern such birds. Breeds over most of North America, Europe and Asia and winters south to Mexico, North Africa and southern Asia; introduced elsewhere.
- Resident
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
A Mallard in the region can only be regarded as a genuine winter visitor if it looks entirely like a wild bird in size, colour and behaviour and is wary, ideally in winter among other migrant ducks. Domestic and feral birds are often heavy, tame and aberrant in colour.
Conservation status
Least Concern; one of the most numerous ducks in the world. Feral birds can hybridise with other Anas species, which elsewhere threatens related ducks.
Scientific name
Anas platyrhynchos | Linnaeus, 1758
Linnaeus described the species in 1758 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. He introduced the genus Anas in that same work. Anas is the Latin word for 'duck'. platyrhynchos is Greek for 'broad-billed', from platus 'broad' and rhunkhos 'bill'. The specimen the first description was based on came from Sweden.