The Howland Mallard Page

Page by Deb

The Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) is pretty common around here. The male is identified by its iridescent green head, yellow bill and orange feet. The female is more drab, but with orange feet, black bill and the blue bar on the back wings. They are common to ponds and lakes in rural Alberta, but also cities like Calgary that normally has open water year round.

Resources where you can find out more:

• Mallard bio at weaselhead.org

Gimme dat... (click image for larger photo)	Mallards and Canada geese have become such a problem in downtown Calgary that there are signs now forbidding feeding of the birds. Either people still feed them, or the ducks have a great memory. Every time we come to Pearce Estate park in the summer and wander down to the river, the ducks seem to see us from a mile off and come begging for food. This female mallard is is either moulting, or a juvie. In the winter, there's a foreign population of mallards in addition to the locals, so there seems to be less begging. This winter of 2003, the mallard population in Calgary is down significantly to around ~2000 birds, perhaps pushed out by the enormous number of geese that are wintering in the open water at the Glenmore Reservoir, or maybe adversely affected by the drought of the last two years. Photo info: 320 x 191 true color ISO speed: 400 Focal length: 71.2000 (plus 1.5X teleconverter) Exposure bias: 0.0000 Metering mode: Spot Exposure program: Normal Compression: 6 Camera make: NIKON Camera model: E5700 Larger photo info: 640 x 381 true color 70KB
(click image for larger photo)	Two weeks later, this is the male from the same group that came begging above. You can just see the green iridescence coming back in after the moulting (or maybe it's a juvenile?). It looks like he's being coy, but I'm sure he's just checking us out. Photo info: 320 x 401 true color Exposure time: 1/825 F-stop: 7.4 ISO speed: 400 Focal length: 67.7000 (plus 1.5X teleconverter) Exposure bias: 0.0000 Metering mode: Center Weighted Exposure program: Normal Compression: 6 Camera make: NIKON Camera model: E5700 Larger photo info: 640 x 802 true color 238KB
(click image for larger photo)	Same day, same place, different ducks. Photo info: 320 x 151 true color Exposure time: 10/6561 F-stop: 7.3 ISO speed: 400 Focal length: 56.7000 Exposure bias: 0.0000 Metering mode: Center Weighted Exposure program: Normal Compression: 6 Camera make: NIKON Camera model: E5700 Larger photo info: 640 x 224 true color 98KB

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