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Mallard | Anas platyrhynchos
Wilde eend | Ánade Azulón
The Mallard is not native to southern Africa: the birds here descend from kept and released domestic ducks. It matters mainly because it hybridises with the native Yellow-Billed Duck, and is therefore controlled in South Africa as an invasive species.
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Voice
The female gives the familiar loud, descending series of quacks, quaak-quaak-quak-quak-quak; the male a soft hoarse raeb and a short whistle in display.
Recording: Esperanza Poveda — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · shortened to the first 60 s, mono · xeno-canto
Identification
50–65 cm, heavily built; feral birds are often larger and aberrantly coloured, with white patches or dark plumage. The breeding male has a glossy green head, a narrow white collar, a purplish-brown breast, grey flanks, a black rear with curled central tail feathers and a yellow bill. The female is mottled pale brown with a dark eye-stripe and an orange bill with a dark saddle. In flight it shows a blue-purple speculum with broad white borders on both sides.
Confusion species
The female and eclipse male resemble Yellow-Billed Duck Anas undulata, but that species is darker and greyer scaled, with a bright yellow bill bearing a sharply defined black patch and a green speculum. Hybrids show every intermediate, with a greenish-yellow bill, a faint head sheen or curled tail feathers. African Black Duck Anas sparsa is blackish with white back spots.
Habitat
Ponds in parks and gardens, golf courses, sewage ponds, dams and rivers in and around towns and farms. It dabbles and grazes for seeds, water plants and invertebrates and readily takes bread and other food provided by people.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
Mainly in South Africa, most numerous in Gauteng, the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, and scattered around towns and farms elsewhere; sporadic in Zimbabwe, Namibia, Botswana and beyond, usually near habitation. The natural range covers Europe, Asia, North America and North Africa; the species has been introduced worldwide.
- Resident
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Mainly in town parks and on golf courses, where most hybrids are also found. It is precisely here that Yellow-Billed Ducks are worth checking closely for pure features. Records of Mallards and hybrids outside urban areas are valuable for tracking the spread.
Conservation status
Not threatened globally. In South Africa it is listed as invasive; programmes are under way to remove feral birds, because hybridisation threatens the genetic integrity of the Yellow-Billed Duck.
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.