![]() ![]() Nests are situated on the ground under cover, seldom far from water, the nest bowl being accumulated debris at the site lined with plucked breast feathers and down. In urban areas, mallards may raise 2 broods a year. Laying mainly occurs from late July to September, with renesting, if necessary, in October - early November. Thereafter males seek additional mating opportunities by pursuing any female still appearing gravid. When breeding, they are dispersed on ill-defined territories where the male’s defence is entirely concentrated on female protection and guarding in the lead up to her laying and commencing incubation. They are seasonally monogamous, with all incubation and duckling care contributed by the female. Mallard mature rapidly and can breed in their first year. Fish & Game New Zealand estimate that approximately 500,000 mallards are shot each year this number undoubtedly including mallard-like hybrids. The mallard is a legal gamebird that is hunted during the annual May-June waterfowl season. There are no credible estimates of the total population. The mallard is New Zealand’s most numerous and widely distributed waterfowl. Mallards utilise a wide range of habitats from urban streams and public parks to isolated lakes, drains in pastoral areas to most slow flowing rivers, lowland lakes and hydro-dams to alpine tarns, and estuaries. Elsewhere mallards have more-or-less completely supplanted grey ducks. Expansion, and displacement of grey duck, is ongoing in southern Westland and Fiordland. They are most numerous in pastoral environments and in and around urban areas. Mallards occur throughout all of New Zealand and on all vegetated subantarctic islands, Chatham Islands and Kermadec Islands and extending to Lord Howe Island (where many are now hybrids with Pacific black duck = grey duck). A narrow white or pale fawn anterior speculum stripe (alar bar) on the wing is indicative of recent hybrid ancestry. Hybrids with grey duck are confusingly variable in most characteristics, especially in face patterning of females. Similar species: females are easily confused with grey ducks from which they can be distinguished by leg colour, bill colour and pattern, less diffuse eye and bill stripes and their more mottled face. Males give soft “raeb raeb” call of variable length. Voice: Female gives typical decrescendo call of about 6-8 loud quacks in a row, soft quacks in communication with ducklings, and a rapid “gag gag gag” repulsion call in courting displays and when pursued by males. The plumage of New Zealand mallards is highly variable due to hybridisation with grey ducks, and also many domesticated mallard varieties that have escaped into the wild population. Males in eclipse resemble females, but with head and neck greyish, retaining some green, and the breast chestnut. The wing pattern and leg colour are the same as for males. The bill is brownish-grey, orange at base, sides and tip and the legs and feet orange. Females are dull brown with feathers edged with buff, and have an indistinct dark eye-stripe on an otherwise featureless face. The bill is yellowish, the eye dark, and legs and feet bright orange. The speculum has thin black then slightly broader white edges at front and rear. The secondary flight feathers are metallic blue, forming a ‘speculum’ on the trailling edge of the inner upper-wing. The back and flanks are pale grey, and the rump and undertail blackish, with curled black upper tail coverts. In breeding plumage, drakes have the head and neck glossy dark green, separated from the maroon breast by a thin white collar. Drakes are about 10% larger than females. Mallards are the ducks that gather en masse whenever bread is thrown out at an urban pond. As a consequence of both their gamefarm origin and hybridisation, the plumages of New Zealand’s mallards are highly variable, especially the females, and males in breeding plumage are duller and less striking than wild northern hemisphere mallards. Extensive hybridisation with the native grey duck followed soon after their initial release and the mallard competitively excluded grey ducks from most wetlands, especially those in and near urban environments and in pastoral landscapes. ![]() ![]() Acclimatisation Societies subsequently bred and released over 30,000 mallards throughout New Zealand until 1974, by which time the mallard had become the most common waterfowl in the country. The New Zealand mallard population is derived from 17 small importations of gamefarm mallards from England between 18, and two later imports of birds and eggs from a gamefarm in Connecticut, USA. ![]()
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