ducks

Focusing on Mallards Part V: Hunting by the Numbers

Rae SpencerLeave a comment

Content Warning: This multi-part blog post contains references to hunting, agriculture, and research practices of killing birds. This installment contains a photograph of a duck hunter with his kills—a pair of dead Mallards. If you choose not to read on, I respect and admire your choice.

Photograph of a brood of Mallard ducklings huddled for a nap in the sunshine. The downy ducklings are yellow and brown with prominent eye stripes. Their mother is sleeping behind them, beak tucked under her wing feathers. Her feathers are shades of tan and gray, and she also has a prominent eye stripe. All are gathered on the stone border surrounding our dragonfly pond.
Photograph of a huddle of Mallard ducklings resting in the sunshine on the stone border of our dragonfly pond. Their mother is just behind them (right of frame).

Like most of my blog journeys, this long perseveration on Mallards started with questions about a visitor in the yard: What happens to a Mallard hen’s flight muscles while she is nesting? If she spends a flightless month on the nest, then two more flightless months escorting her flightless ducklings, how does she keep her muscles in flying condition?

A Mallard hen stretches her wings after a splashy bath in a small backyard dragonfly pond. She is standing tall in the water, facing the camera, wings extended behind her. Her feathers are mostly speckled and striped shades of brown with bright white coloration on the underside of her wing feathers. A round, floating solar-powered fountain is spending up a small spray of water (left). An array of water plants are growing in the pond, including water lilies. Tall irises and grasses grow around the pond's river-stone border, filling the background with greenery.
Photo of the Mallard hen who inspired this blog series. In this photo, she is standing tall in the dragonfly pond, facing the camera as she flaps vigorously after a splashy bath.

A prolonged literature search produced partial answers. And raised more questions.

In the end, a research paper out of North Dakota (Krapu, 1981) confirmed that wild Mallard hens lose significant body weight during nesting, including most of their fat reserves. But the researchers did not measure or comment on flight muscles.

Beyond that 1981 anchor point, my flight muscle question lies abandoned, waiting for another researcher or reader to pick it up. Until then, I’m content with Part III‘s conclusion: Only the Mallards know.

Photo of a Mallard hen standing in a shallow spot in the dragonfly pond. Her brood of ducklings are gathered beside her. The hen's feathers are shiny and sleek, speckled brown and tan. The ducklings are downy with brown and yellow markings. Both hen and ducklings have the prominent dark eye stripe common to Mallards. In the background, large smooth river stones are stacked loosely around the pond's border. A pair of conch shells are visible, incorporated into the border.
Photo of a different Mallard hen, one who visited in the spring of this year (2025), resting in the dragonfly pond with her ducklings. She was wary of me and my camera and taught her ducklings to be wary as well. This is how wild Mallard ducklings learn to be wild Mallards. Usually. Later in this series I will introduce some exceptions.

Caught in tangles of tangents

I can’t resist tangents. They are how my world expands. And how my mind works, OCD and all. So here I am, more than a year later, still exploring this labyrinthine idea web of Mallards and Mallard literature.

But this particular perseveration, my Mallard fixation, runs deeper than most of my blog ideas. In fact, it runs straight into a mire of social and psychological issues that I am poorly equipped to navigate. So here I remain. Grappling for words and wisdom in the Mallard archives. Because much of what motivates me to care about this world, much of what motivates me to read and write, is also in the Mallard archives.

Sharp black-and-white image scanned from a slide. The image dates to the 1970s, and shows me as a pre-adolescent. I am squatting behind a smallish round wire cage, which has a leather carrying strap. I am holding onto the wires of the cage and peering into the distance. My body language and facial expression suggest that I am misbehaving and trying not to get caught. Inside the cage, a speckled white and gray duck is panting or vocalizing, beak open. The duck is too large for the cramped cage.
Photograph of me in some awkward childhood era, caught coveting a duck at some fair or other event. I was attempting to stay small and inconspicuous behind the big fancy duck, so that Mother wouldn’t catch me coveting.

In all of the decades between the anxious moment captured, above, and my present seat at the blog table, I’ve lived in the tensions between mine and not-mine. Between the coop and the wetlands. Between the self-protective urge to stay small and inconspicuous and the inescapable longing for expansive connections.

I expect most readers live in the same tensions. It’s part of being human. It is, perhaps, part of being Mallard, as well.

Photo of five Mallard ducklings climbing onto the border of the dragonfly pond while their mother watches from the water. Four of the ducklings are immediately visible, center frame, but the fifth is partially hidden behind a clump of short grass. The ducklings are downy with yellow and brown markings. One has tiny water droplets clinging to its head and neck.
Photo of five ducklings climbing out of the dragonfly pond while their mother keeps watch from her position in the water. The fifth duckling is small and inconspicuous, hidden behind a tuft of grass on the right.

Out of my comfort zone

These Mallard posts have turned into foundation work for a policy argument.

(Spoiler alert: I am not crafting an argument against hunting.)

Policy arguments are not my norm and most definitely are not my creative strength. But I’m wading in.

I’m wading in without a map or floatation device, hoping for the kind of synergy that sometimes makes words more wise than their author. Hoping for fewer small and inconspicuous silences.

Photo of a Mallard duckling peering over the stone border of the dragonfly pond. This photo was taken at ground level, so the duckling's head is only partially visible over the stones, concentrating focus on the duckling's eye. A second duckling's rounded back, fluffy with down, appears to the far right of the frame.
Photo of a duckling peeking over the border of the dragonfly pond. The duckling has downy markings of yellow and brown and has the exaggerated forehead and eye proportions of infant cuteness.

I grew up around poultry, both wild and domestic. I also grew up around guns and hunting. Through all my many long years, I have accepted, unquestioning, most of the arguments in favor of hunting as both a sport and a science-backed approach to wildlife management and conservation.

I still accept some of these arguments. But I’m developing deep resistance to others. Resistance based on all of this reading about the history and practices of Mallard hunting and conservation.

(Let me repeat that spoiler: I am not crafting an argument against hunting.)

Blurry sepia-toned photo of a man standing beside two dead Mallards, which are hanging from a string or wire so that they are at head-height. The man is wearing a brimmed hat, a buttoned-up shirt with a rumpled collar, and a padded coat that appears to be made of canvas or similar material. The Mallards are male and female, judging by their plumage, and one of the female's wings hangs in way that suggests the wing was broken when she was shot. The outdoor scene shows trees that have lost their leaves for winter and a very small wooden outbuilding with a tin roof. The outbuilding looks to me like an outhouse or smoke shed.
Photo of an unknown man posing with two dead Mallards. One of the Mallards is in male plumage, the other in female plumage. I found this photo, which likely dates from the 1920s or 30s, in an album belonging to a great aunt. Based on labelling of a companion photo, the man’s name was Harry Kenyon. I don’t know how or why he ended up in Aunt Birdie’s album.

I’m not comfortable arguing policy, which means there will be throat clearing and wandering off-topic. I am, after all, a blogger. Not a lobbyist. A poet, not a lawmaker. I seldom demand rhetorical precision of myself, in my creative work. Which is part of why I enjoy blogging. Rhetorical precision is for the classroom and office, not the blog.

But there are upsides to making this argument in blog form. There’s freedom from structure and stricture. My hybrid interweaving of literature review and memoir is choice, not style guide. More importantly, there’s no peer review. I am my own editor and publisher, so I’m allowed to make overt appeals to emotion. Including photos and videos of ducklings.

These photo and videos are my unsubtle attempt to convince readers that ducks are stakeholders in policy discussions about waterfowl hunting.

Photo of a Mallard hen leading her ducklings out of the dragonfly pond. All are standing on a section of flagstone set level into the yard. In the background are a coiled green hose and an orange, plastic, five-gallon bucket stamped with white lettering reading "Let's do this" in all-caps. The Mallard hen is maybe a foot tall and has mostly brown feathers edged with tan, except for a patch of blue edged with black and white on her wing. The ducklings are maybe three or four inches tall and have downy feathers with yellow and brown markings. There are seven ducklings readily visible, though they are difficult to count due to how they are crowded together. (In all, this hen had eleven ducklings.)
Photo of a Mallard hen and her ducklings exiting the dragonfly pond in spring, 2025. In the background, a bright orange bucket is stamped with the big-box slogan “Let’s do this”.

Sport hunting is a profitable mine, and Mallards are a form of ore

Unlike many of my blog topics, Mallard hunting isn’t a rabbit hole. It’s a multi-level, vastly profitable mine regulated by international treaties and cooperative relationships between state and federal agencies.

Everything in the Mallard mine is complicated by tradition and money and land.

This isn’t about the flight muscles

I introduced a few ideas about the capitalism behind the science curtain in Part II. And where Mallards are concerned, science isn’t the only interested party. Mallard hunting (and farming) is not an independent storefront on the town square. This is big business and big money, so big policy questions come into play.

Who owns wildlife, on public and private lands? Who gets to decide how wildlife is exploited, on public and private lands? When is wildlife no longer wild? (Keep inserting “on public and private lands”, as the questions roll on…) What are the roles and aims of conservation work? Who gets to own and discharge firearms? Why and how are tradition and research guiding individual and community decision making, when it comes to hunting?

This isn’t about flight muscles.

Except, isn’t it?

Mallards are poultry. And once Mallards are defined as poultry, once flight muscles are defined as breast meat, Mallard hunting is only about the flight muscles. Wild Mallards are protein harvested by shotgun.

Photo of a Mallard hen grazing through a helping of wild bird seed that I scattered into the grass (and weeds) just beside the dragonfly pond. Her eleven ducklings are either watching her eat or beginning to wander back toward the pond. They sampled the seed but didn't eat much.
Photo of a Mallard hen eating bird seed. She is surrounded by her eleven ducklings. The ducklings sampled the seed but were unimpressed.

Just how big is this business?

A 2006 survey from the US Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) found that “…waterfowl hunters represented 10 percent of all hunters, 7 percent of all hunting-related expenditures, and 6 percent of all hunting equipment expenditures” (Carver, 2008, pg. 3).

Here’s the waterfowl hunting numbers for 2006 (derived from Carver, 2008, Table 1, p. 4):

Number of US hunters (ducks)1,147,000
Number of US hunters (geese)700,000
Number of US hunters (all waterfowl)1,306,000
Reported US trip expenditures (waterfowl)$493,987,000
Reported US equipment expenditures (waterfowl)$406,298,000
Total US spending (waterfowl)$900,285,000

Those zeros are not a typo. That’s over nine hundred million dollars spent, in 2006, on hunting ducks, geese, and other waterfowl. While more than half of those dollars went to the travel industry, some four hundred million dollars were non-travel purchases, including “rifles, shotguns, other firearms, ammunition, telescopic sights, decoys, hunting dogs and associated costs. Also included are auxiliary equipment such as camping equipments, binoculars, special hunting clothing, processing and taxidermy costs. Due to small sample sizes, special equipment purchases such as boats, campers, trucks, and cabins are excluded…” (Carver, 2008, Table 1, pg. 4).

The author of this report adjusted the economic impact of waterfowl hunting through input–output modeling, to estimate how this spending radiates through the economy: “The trip expenditures of $494 million by waterfowl hunters generated $1.2 billion in total output while equipment expenditures of $406 million generated $1.1 billion in total output in the United States” (Carver, 2008, pg. 10).

So it’s fair to say that waterfowl hunting is a multi-billion dollar industry, in the US. That’s multi-billion per year. And Mallard hunting is a massive chunk of that industry. “Hunter reports indicate that mallards made up about 43% (5.5 million annually) of the ducks taken before 1960, when mallard regulations were less restrictive; the Duck Wing Survey indicates that mallards have made up 33% of the harvest (3.6 million annually) since 1960″ (Martin & Carney, 1977, p. IX).

Photo of a Mallard hen settling for a rest beside the dragonfly pond. In this phot0, most of her ducklings were hidden beneath her, tucked into the feathers of her chest and abdomen. One duckling has not settled, yet, and is standing just under her neck, looking around. Another duckling is barely visible to the right of frame, mostly hidden by a tuft of short, cut grass.
Photo of a Mallard hen settling for a nap with her ducklings beside the dragonfly pond in spring, 2025. Tucked beneath her chest, one duckling has raised its head to look around.

Given the money spent on hunting ducks, geese, and other waterfowl, it’s not a surprise that “…waterfowl hunting is positively correlated with income. That is, as household income increases, the percentage of waterfowl hunters for each group also increases. Income is also positively correlated with the participation rate of all hunters. However, all hunters do not tend to be as affluent as waterfowl hunters” (Carver, 2008, pg. 6).

This is not subsistence hunting. For the majority of duck hunters in the US, suspension of duck season would not equate to food insecurity. Yes, many hunters eat the ducks they kill. But they would still be able to eat, even if they killed no ducks.

How many Mallards are there, anyway?

Efforts to count the continent’s ducks began as early as the 1940s, when researchers tramped out into the marshes for hand counts. Then pilots joined the work, providing population estimates (and species distributions) for flocks spotted during aerial flyovers. Hunter surveys, requesting that hunters report how many and what kinds of ducks have been killed in the season, add a final dimension of data. At the confluence of these ongoing data streams, USFWS calculates Mallard “abundance”, which isn’t exactly a population count but is close enough for my purposes.

As of 1974, “The estimated size of the continental mallard population in May has ranged from a high of 14.4 million in 1958 to a low of 7.1 million in 1965. Generally, the mallard population began to decline after the 1958 peak until 1962, and remained below 10 million birds until 1970. The decline and consequent low level of the mallard population between 1959 and 1969 generally coincides with a period of poor habitat conditions on the major breeding grounds” (Pospahala, Anderson, & Henney, p. 49).

Over more recent decades (from 1992–2024) the “mid-continent” stock of US Mallards has ranged between 6.2 million and 11.9 million (USFWS, 2024, p. 12). (There are management purposes at work, in this focus on “mid-continent” Mallards, which I will get to later.)

Photo of a Mallard hen standing in a shallow place in the dragonfly pond. Her ducklings are gathered in the water, beside her. Her head is tipped slightly to her left, right eye angled toward the sky in search of aerial predators. Anthropomorphized, her head angle and expression look questioning.
Photo of a Mallard hen and her ducklings in the dragonfly pond, taking a brief break from their wanderings in the spring of 2025.

In 2024, Mallard abundance in the US registered some 6.6 million. In 2023, about 6.1 million (USFWS, 2024, p. iii).

With recent numbers hovering near the low end of the 1992–2024 Mallard abundance range, and below the lowest 1960s numbers, it seems that the Mallard glass is currently half-empty. But if accounts from the late 1800s and early 1900s are accurate, the North American Mallard glass has been half-empty for over a century. (Drop a pin in this claim. There will be evidence later.)

Where do North American Mallards come from, and where do they go?

Continental Mallard production can vary wildly over a very short span of years. For example, 1957 produced a count of 22.1 million Mallard “young”, but 1961 saw only 5.9 million (Anderson, 1975, p. 33). Granted, it’s difficult to count Mallard young, but there was undoubtedly a major decline between 1957 and 1961.

By the 1970s, it was clear that Mallard production was related to the number of ponds in Mallards’ breeding grounds. (Here is where that focus on mid-continent Mallards starts to become important, as the largest and most productive breeding grounds are in the north and central portions of North America, in “prairie pothole” country.) And, prior to 1960, the number of ponds steadily declined everywhere. But habitat was never the only factor.

Nesting season and shooting season

The existence of a “long-term average” population number for Mallards, of around 7.9 million (USFWS, 2024, p. iii), flattens into stasis a seasonally dynamic population. Spring and summer are boom and winnow seasons. Some 75% of Mallard mortality occurs in first-year ducks, either in the nest or during the weeks immediately after hatching, before young birds learn to fly (Anderson, 1975, p. IX). Then fall and winter bring the hunter’s guns.

“…it may be predicted that about 60 out of every 100 mallards flying south along the Mississippi Flyway will be hit by shot” (Bellrose, 1953, p. 358-359).

Photo of a Mallard hen just stepping up onto the stone border of the dragonfly pond. In the background, splashes and sprays of water fill the air, churned up by her recent splashy bath and the excited actions of her ducklings.
Photo of a Mallard hen getting ready to climb out of the dragonfly pond. Behind her, ducklings are splashing and playing in the water.

After Mallards survive their first summer, death by shotgun accounts for a significant percentage of overall Mallard mortality. Of the adult males that die each year, about 50% die by shotgun (Anderson, 1975, p. 24). The percentages are slightly lower for females (40%) and first-year Mallards (45%) (Anderson, 1975, p. 24).

Given all these shotguns, and all of the other Mallard hazards out there, the majority of Mallards that survive their first summer do not live more than two adult winters (Anderson, 1975, p. IX). That doesn’t mean that a three-year-old Mallard is an old Mallard, only that it is a lucky Mallard. Even luckier Mallards have lived as long as 13 years in the wild (a few female Mallards), and one particularly charmed male Mallard survived 18 years (Anderson, 1975, p. 26).

Harvest by shotgun

In the US, prior to 1960 hunters bagged some 5.5 million Mallards every year (Martin & Carney, 1977, p. IX). It’s worth repeating that number: 5.5 million Mallards. Every year.

After hunting regulations were tightened in 1960, the Mallard kill dropped to about 3.6 million per year (Martin & Carney, 1977, p. IX). Such numbers fluctuate, of course, and have dropped somewhat further since the 1970s. But hunting still claims millions of Mallards, each year. USFWS estimated a Mallard harvest of 2,042,668 birds, in 2022 (USFWS, 2023, Table 1E, p. 25).

Up through the 1970s, close to a quarter of the entire North American Mallard population was killed by hunters, every year (Anderson & Burnham, 1976, p. 40).

Based on the numbers previously cited for 2022 (2,042,668 Mallards killed by hunters) and 2023 (estimated population of 6.1 million), it seems that perhaps one-third of the US Mallard population continues to die by shotgun every year.

Overkill?

Only a few paragraphs ago, the USFWS estimated a 2024 Mallard population of 6.6 million. In 2024, a pre-1960 harvest (during years when harvests averaged 5.5 million ducks per year) would have obliterated the US population of Mallards.

In fact, the pre-1960s binges, on top of widespread habitat destruction, dealt multiple near-obliteration blows to North American Mallards. Starting early in the 1900s, hunters and researchers agreed that something needed to be done to save the Mallards. At least, they agreed that something needed to be done to save Mallard hunting.

The first (documented) North American Mallard bottleneck, circa 1920

Prior to the 1900s, hunters spoke of North America’s duck populations in awe-tinged phrases.

“It is about the finest country you could imagine in the wildest flights of fancy; Ducks getting up under your feet at every yard; Hawks, Goatsuckers, Prairie Chickens, and small birds in all directions… I shot a Teal and a splendid Shoveller drake for the pot. I can fancy I hear you exclaiming against the barbarism of eating such a bird; but I am getting daily accustomed to birds which are considered rare in England, and regard them now from a more utilitarian point of view” (Wood, 1885, p. 225).

“During this autumnal movement the number of ducks frequenting the lakes and ponds throughout Manitoba is prodigious. I shall not soon forget the hundreds I saw on the innumerable ponds between Rapid City and the Oak River, whilst on an excursion towards Fort Ellice, in the middle of October, 1883. Yet those I saw must have been as nothing compared with the abundance to be seen in some other places. A friend who had several days’ shooting at Totogon, near the south end of Lake Manitoba, about the end of September, describes the ducks as being so numerous that only the terms ‘acres’ and ‘millions’ could adequately express their abundance. The majority were Mallards, Anas boscas…” (Christy, 1885, p. 133).

By the 1920s, Mallards populations had declined to a notable low:

“The duck marshes on the Saginaw River no longer teem with water fowl. In early September and before the first frost the cackle of the Carolina rail is on every hand. These little birds—the Sora, seem as plentiful as ever, so I have not given up the marshes of the Saginaw entirely, but once or twice in the early part of September I get out the old canoe and with Alphonse to paddle or push, I take the trip through several miles of the Cheboyganning rice beds and usually get what the law allows of rail shooting, but in making all of this distance through acres and acres of rice, one or two ducks is all I see in place of the thousands of old” (Mershon, 1923, p. 73).

And this is where I leave the Mallards, for now. A poor remnant of a once thriving species, scarce and growing scarcer into the 1920s. In the next post, help arrives.

Photo of a Mallard hen and her ducklings in the dragonfly pond. Taken along ground level, the photo shows the hen's head and neck and back, with a blurred foreground of stone blocking the rest of her. Framed under the arch of her neck and chin, one of her ducklings is in sharp focus, facing the camera.
Photo of a Mallard hen and her ducklings exploring the dragonfly pond in spring, 2025. Here the hen is in the foreground and one of her ducklings is framed by her silhouette.

A housekeeping note (or, rather, a territory-keeping note)

Throughout this post, I’ve switched back and forth between talking about North American Mallards and US Mallards without much fanfare. Doesn’t it sound presumptuous? It’s almost as if I have forgotten that there are other countries on the continent. (Doesn’t it sound familiar?)

But from here on out, I’ll need to take more care. Because, starting in the early 1900s, lawmakers and researchers divvied up North America’s Mallards. There were, and still are, jurisdictions and flyways. More importantly, genetic work has identified two discreet and rarely-intermixing populations of Mallards, an eastern gene group and a western gene group (Lavretsky, Janzen, & McCracken, 2019). And my particular policy argument involves eastern Mallards, alone.

Preview of Part VI: The US judicial branch decides who owns the Mallards that visit US lands, and funding arrives for conservation

As long as there were plenty of Mallards, everywhere, distinctions between North American and US Mallards were moot. But as Mallard populations dwindled, hunters came into conflict over who got to shoot the Mallards that remained. And with increasing scarcity came increasing value, along with politicians to squabble over resource ownership.

The problem was (and still is, to a certain extent) that Mallards have always migrated according to their own maps, which existed long before humans decided that land could be owned. Given that the North American Mallard mine spans three (or more) countries, including most of the states in each country, and that Mallards are valuable ore, who owns the profit? Who gets to harvest this particular protein, and how should they be allowed to market it?

North American Mallards as a species have continued breeding and migrating, and US Mallards as a resource have continued falling into hunters’ bags, but the species and resource exist on two seemingly separate planes.

Oliver Wendell Holmes summed it up succinctly, in a landmark case that upheld the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty: “The whole foundation of the State’s rights is the presence within their jurisdiction of birds that yesterday had not arrived, tomorrow may be in another State and in a week a thousand miles away” (Missouri v. Holland, 1920, para. 6).

Photo of a Mallard hen drifting off to sleep while still standing. She is perched on the sunlit, stony border of our dragonfly pond. Her brood of ducklings are scattered under and in front of her, most in different sleep poses. One duckling is still awake, though visibly drowsy with half-closed eyes. Another duckling is barely balanced on the edge of a rounded, smooth stone, and appears on the verge of falling off backwards. Yet another duckling has nodded off with its neck bent and the tip of its beak just touching the sun-warmed rock.
Photo of a Mallard hen resting (asleep while standing up) on the stone border of the dragonfly pond in spring, 2025. Her ducklings are napping in a loose cuddle-heap, sprawled from just under her chest to almost a foot away. Some of the ducklings are slumped awkwardly in sleep, exhausted from their first hours off the nest, while others are fidgeting for a more comfortable position.

References

Anderson, D.R. (1975). Population ecology of the Mallard: V. Temporal and geographic estimates of survival, recovery, and harvest rates. Resource Publication 125. U.S. Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service. https://nwrc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16473coll29/id/4786

Anderson, D. R., & Burnham, K. P. (1976). Population ecology of the Mallard. VI: The effect of exploitation on survival. Resource Publication 128. U. S. Department of Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service. https://nwrc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16473coll29/id/4899

Bellrose, F. C. (1953). A preliminary evaluation of cripple losses in waterfowl. In James B. Trefethen (Ed.) Transactions of the Eighteenth North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference (pp. 337-360). The Wildlife Management Institute. https://wildlifemanagement.institute/conference/transactions/1953

Carver, E. (2008). Economic impact of waterfowl hunting in the United States: Addendum to the 2006 national survey of fishing, hunting, and wildlife-associated recreation. U. S. Fish and Wildlife Services. https://www.fws.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2024-04/1153.pdf

Christy, R. M. (1885). Notes on the birds of Manitoba. The Zoologist: A Monthly Journal of Natural History, 3rd Series, IX(100). https://ia801303.us.archive.org/27/items/zoologist85lond/zoologist85lond.pdf

Gillham, C. E. (1947). Wildfowling can be saved. In Ethel M. Quee (Ed.), Transactions of the Twelfth North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference (pp. 47-52). The Wildlife Management Institute. https://wildlifemanagement.institute/conference/transactions/1947

Krapu, G. L. (1981) The role of nutrient reserves in Mallard reproduction. The Auk 98, 29-38. doi: 10.1093/auk/98.1.29

Lavretsky, P., Janzen, T., & McCracken, K. G. (2019). Identifying hybrids and the genomics of hybridization: Mallards and American Black Ducks of Eastern North America. Ecology and Evolution (9), 3470–3490. DOI: 10.1002/ece3.4981 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ece3.4981

Martin, E.M., & Carney, S.M. (1977). Population ecology of the Mallard: IV. A review of duck hunting regulations, activity, and success with special reference to the Mallard. Resource Publication 130. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. https://pubs.usgs.gov/unnumbered/5230112/report.pdf

Mershon, W. B. (1923). Recollections of My Fifty Years Hunting and Fishing. The Stratford Company. https://archive.org/details/recollectionsofm00mers_0

Missouri v. Holland, 252 U.S. 416. (1920). https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/252/416

Organ, J. F., Mahoney, S. P., & Geist, V. (2010). Born in the hands of hunters: The North American model of wildlife conservation. The Wildlife Professional 4(3), 22-27. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267749137_Born_in_the_hands_of_hunters_the_North_American_Model_of_Wildlife_Conservation

Pospahala, R. S., Anderson, D. R., & Henney, C. J. (1974). Population ecology of the mallard. II: Breeding and habitat conditions, size of the breeding populations, and production indices. Resource Publication 115. U.S. Department of Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife. https://nwrc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16473coll29/id/10213/rec/1

USFWS (2023). Migratory Bird Hunting Activity and Harvest during the 2021–2022 and 2022–2023 Hunting Seasons. USFWS. https://www.fws.gov/sites/default/files/documents/migratory-bird-hunting-activity-and-harvest-report-2021-to-2022-and-2022-to-2023.pdf

USFWS (2024). Waterfowl Population Status, 2024. US Department of the Interior. https://www.fws.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2024-08/waterfowl-population-status-report-2024.pdf

Wood, T. B. (1885). Notes on the zoology of Manitoba. The Zoologist: A Monthly Journal of Natural History, 3rd Series, IX(100). https://ia801303.us.archive.org/27/items/zoologist85lond/zoologist85lond.pdf

Focusing on Mallards Part IV: Positioning My Perspective(s)

Rae SpencerLeave a comment

Content warning

This multi-part blog post contains references to the hunting, agriculture, and research practices of killing birds. This particular installment contains references to hunting other prey and killing chickens from a backyard flock. If you decide not to read on, I respect and admire your choice.

Photograph of five Mallard ducklings resting on the stone border of our dragonfly pond after a tiring swim. Four of the ducklings are settled in and nodding off, while the fifth is still standing and fidgeting. The ducklings are fluffy with down (immature feathers), have yellow and brown markings, and each still has a visible remnant of egg tooth at the beak tip. They were less than 24 hours old when this photo was taken.
Photograph of five Mallard ducklings resting on the stone border of our dragonfly pond. Four of the ducklings are settled in and nodding off, while the fifth is still standing and fidgeting.

Livestock are living stock. And sometimes pets.

Until they are not.

Growing up in rural Tennessee, I had daily exposure to food chain realities. Our freezers (we had two) were stocked with meat from assorted livestock we raised. Livestock we loved. Chickens and cows, during my memory years, with vague early memories of pigs.

A 1970s-era photo, scanned from our family archive, of four fancy chickens roaming free in our yard. Two of the chickens have dark feathers with reddish highlights, one with additional iridescent green highlights on its wing feathers. A third chicken has almost all light reddish-brown feathers. The fourth's feathers are black over its head and neck, reddish tan across its chest, and gray over its wings, back, abdomen, and tail. The gray feathers on its back and abdomen are fluffier and downier than regular feathers. All four chickens have topknots of varying fluffiness and fanciness. All four are notably dainty.
A 1970s-era photo of four “banties” (bantams), dainty chickens with variously fancy topknots, roaming free in our yard.
A 1970s-era photograph scanned from our family archive. Three young cows are standing near a fence line, pasture and woods in most of the background, with one wall of a weathered wooden shed visible. The cows are browsing through a scatter of trampled hay. The cows' coat colors indicate their mixed heritage. The cow closest to the camera strongly favors a Brown Swiss milk cow: its body is mostly dark brown with lighter shading on its legs and ears and a very pale muzzle with a dark nose. The middle cow likely has some Charolais beef breeding: its coloration is a patchy mix of pale tans and white. The cow furthest from the lens has markings typical of Hereford beef cattle: primarily reddish coloration with white legs, a white stripe down its back, and a white face.
A 1970s-era photograph of three young cows standing near a fence line with pasture and woods in the background.
Another 1970s-era photo, scanned from the family archive. In this photo, three red pigs are grazing in a dry, clean patch of short pasture grass. The pigs are likely of Duroc descent, given their red coloration and the widespread popularity of the Duroc breed.
A 1970s-era photo of three red pigs grazing a patch of short pasture grass.

Our chickens and cows and pigs had individual names and individual personalities. We raised them and cared for them and loved them. But food chain reality means that livestock exists to be eaten. No matter how cherished. No matter how tame.

In this 1970s-era photograph, a red-and-white Hereford cow stands over her very young and very sleepy calf. The calf is red and white, like its mother, and its coat is thick and curly and damp in places. Just behind this cow and calf, a small cluster of black cows have gathered. These background cows would be of Angus breeding. All of the cows are standing in a patch of scattered straw and hay. The ground under the straw and hay would probably have been a trampled mire of mud. The bare-limbs tree line, just visible, indicates a winter setting.
Yet another 1970s-era photograph from the family archive. Here, a red-and-white Hereford cow stands over her very young calf. The calf is curled up on the ground, sleepy eyes and ears drooping.

Off to slaughter

Our cows and pigs were slaughtered and processed by local-ish butchers, but Mother slaughtered our chickens with a hatchet. Then she cleaned and portioned their carcasses while I collected and bagged bloody feathers.

In this 1970s-era photograph, Mother is feeding a flock of some 15 chickens, along with 3 white ducks, from a repurposed coffee can filled with whatever mix of feed and corn was on the day's menu. The chickens are mostly gray-and-white speckled Dominiques (we called them "domineckers"), with a single white leghorn rooster and a few Rhode Island red hens. In the background, our white station wagon is parked under a pole shed, along with several bicycles. The photo is poorly focused with faded colors.
In this 1970s-era photograph, Mother is feeding our small flock of chickens and ducks. At the moment this photo was snapped, Mother was bent over, using her free hand to enforce order. If photos came with sound, you would hear her scolding the greedy birds and coaxing the shy ones.1

In reviewing family archives for this post, I was struck by how similar the above scene is to a photo from the early 1900s, found in our maternal grandmother’s album. There was clearly something generational going on at our table.

Scanned image of an early 1900s photograph from my grandmother's photo album. The sepia-toned black-and-white image shows a flock of large chickens foraging in a tight bunch, probably having just been given feed. Some of the chickens have dark feathers and some have light feathers. The background is bare-limbed trees (winter), a large flat field, a post-and-wire fence with a closer fence having its lower section blocked off by tin. There is also a small outbuilding with an open door, with what appears to be a tractor parked in front.
Early 1900s-era photograph of some twenty chickens foraging in a bare yard with farm equipment, fences, and an outbuilding in the background.

Wildlife can also be living stock, to a hunter

Small and sundry prey

In addition to eating chicken, beef, and pork raised on our property, we sometimes ate squirrels and rabbits shot by my father and brothers. It’s possible that our beagles sometimes helped on these hunts. (It’s more likely that our beagles hindered these hunts.)

A small square photograph of three beagles, motion-blurred, play-fighting on top of a wooden doghouse. Shadows of fencing are visible on the doghouse. I believe these three beagles are Daisy, Fella, and Little Bit, though we also had a fourth beagle named Dan.
A 1970s-era photo of three naughty beagles play-fighting on top of a doghouse.

I helped skin and clean the squirrels and rabbits, and I remember being fascinated by their soft fur. I also remember Mother muttering and tsking while she cooked squirrel and rabbit meals. She breaded and fried the meat, and served barely edible, extremely tough portions with open disdain.

I developed a lasting case of meat snobbery, rooted in Mother’s disdain. Squirrels and rabbits were in the lowest edibility tier. Nothing lower was served. No frog legs. No snake, turtle, or alligator meat. No opossums.

Something generational was going on at our table there, too, but in the opposite sense of backyard flocks. Mother preserved her family’s tradition of raising chickens for slaughter, but put a permanent end to the family tradition of opossum hunting. (Scroll quickly if you don’t care to see a sepia-toned group of early 1900s ancestors showing off a bunch of dead, dying, or faking-death opossums, along with the dogs that facilitated the hunt.)

Scanned image of a photograph from my grandmother's photo album. In the album, the hand-printed caption read "The morning after our great Opposum hunt. 'We won't forget.'" This deep-sepia-toned black-and-white photo, circa early 1900s, shows five people standing in a row with a fourth person kneeling in front. Posing outdoors in a yard, the people are holding at least three opossums. The opossums are either dead, dying, or faking death. The woman to the far left is holding a smallish black-and-white dog, while the man kneeling in front is restraining two hounds. Probable (possible?) identifications include standing L to R: Sarah Harrison, Georgia Linton, Charlie Linton, Bill Linton, and an unknown girl; kneeling in front: Buck Linton.
In my grandmother’s album, this photo is labelled “The morning after our great Opposum hunt. ‘We won’t forget’.”

That’s my grandmother, second from the left, one hand behind her back and the other hand dangling an opossum for the camera. This particular hunt (it wasn’t the only time the family hunted and ate opossums) was special because one of the cousins (Sarah Harrison, standing on the far left) had come to visit.

Scanned image of a sepia-toned black-and-white photograph in my great aunt's photo album. In the album, the hand-printed caption reads "Sarah Harrison / Popman's cousin / 'the Possum hunt'". The outdoor photo shows a woman wearing a plaid dress with intricately pieced trim and pockets, white stockings, and white shoes. The woman is holding two dead, dying, or faking-death opossums, one opossum in each hand. The woman's dark hair is pinned up, and she is looking at the camera but not smiling. Beside her is a smallish black-and-white dog with a bobbed tail and half-pricked ears. The dog is looking up, attention fixed on the woman and opossums.
This photo was in a great aunt’s album. The photo is labelled: “Sarah Harrison / Popman’s cousin / ‘the Possum hunt’ “2

I should add that Mother’s disdain was not coherently taxonomic. Reptiles, amphibians, and insects were off the menu, but so were ducks, geese, and goats. Which meant some of our livestock were exempt from slaughter. What’s more, “dairy” came from cows and cows exclusively. There’s no logic here, only family and cultural tradition.

Cue any stand-up comic mocking a southern drawl. For that matter, cue any bully standing in their own tradition, mocking other traditions.

Photograph from 2021 of a white-tailed deer trotting beside a paved path at Back Bay Wildlife Refuge in Virginia Beach, VA. The background and foreground are winter-toned in oranges and browns of dormant shrubs and grasses, with occasional greens of live oaks and wax myrtles typical of coastal Virginia. The deer's head and tail are up, ears angled to listen behind her, in a body language that suggests alertness verging on alarm but not panic. Moments after I snapped this photo, the deer vanished into the tall seagrass.
Photograph of a white-tailed deer trotting beside a paved path at Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge. In my southern-Tennessee lexicon, “venison” very specifically refers to deer meat. I only learned in my middle-age that the word “venison” has different and wider definitions in different cultures.

In my late teen and early adult years, my oldest sister’s boyfriend often gifted us venison. I was particularly fond of what I called “Bambi roast” and “Bambi spaghetti”. Bambi, it seems, ranked high in my edible-mammal hierarchy. A bit below pet chickens and cows, but certainly above squirrels and rabbits. Which were at least on the list. Unlike opossums.

Here in my middle years, my childhood memories of skinning squirrels and rabbits seem dreamlike. As if those skinny arms and small hands weren’t my own. After all, any brief stroll through my blog history will find some tender post about squirrel and rabbit nests. I cringe, extra, thinking about any of the yard’s visitors heading into a hunter’s sights, then into a frying pan or stew pot.

Photograph from the spring of 2024. Five Mallard ducklings, less than two days old, are floating in a cluster in our dragonfly pond. Two of the ducklings have their heads cocked, one eye looking skyward. They are responding to an alarm call from their mother, who had spotted a hawk wheeling overhead.
Yes, Mallard babies. I’m talking about you. I’m aching to protect you.

But I didn’t always equate animals, my own pets and livestock in particular, with the meat on my table.

Further aside… so many eggs

Gathering the eggs

On mornings when my oldest sister was too tired or busy or sick to tend the chickens, I was roused and sent in her place. I remember egg gathering as sleepy, smelly, spidery work. Early morning work. (I’ve never been an early morning kind of girl.)

Egg gathering meant wrestling the chicken pen latch, which grew tighter each year as the posts and gate warped. Then I had to put down my bucket—to unclip the rusty chicken house latch and heave the rickety door over hills of weeds, dirt, and dung—and usually had two or three hens perched in my hair and on my shoulders by the time I bent to retrieve the bucket. Finally, I would stumble over the plank sill into the warm, dimly lit interior.

(Yes, I always stumbled. My severe astigmatism couldn’t navigate the sudden change from light to dark, and the hens dashed in and out through the door in frenzied delight.)

Our chicken house was closer in size to a closet than a house. I don’t have any chicken pen/chicken house photos to share, but almost any wire pen around almost any vine-covered tin-roof-and-plank outbuilding would be an accurate visual.

Veils of cobweb hung from the low rafters. Snakes, flies, wasps, spiders, and light entered and exited through gaps in the walls and roof. A short row of nest boxes lined one wall. The floor was dirt, feathers, dung, and broken shells. The chicken house smelled strongly of chickens and dust, but also of cat urine (from our army of yard cats) and dog feces (from the adjoining dog pen) and, every so often, of predators.3

Shooing hens from their nests, or reaching beneath those who refused to be shooed, I gathered eggs by touch more than sight. (It’s not as easy as it sounds. Our hens didn’t give up their eggs willingly, especially to the tentative little sister of their usual egg-gatherer. Wing slaps left bruises, and claws and beaks drew blood.)

The warm, sticky, tough-shelled eggs that I gathered didn’t feel like they held nascent chicks and ducklings. 

A 1980s-era photograph of a red hen and her brood of variously yellow, tan, or striped chicks, all safely enclosed in one of our wood-and-chicken-wire coops. The stocky hen shows strong Rhode Island Red characteristics, but the chicks' mixed genetics were more typical of our flock.
A 1980s-era photograph of a red hen and her brood of eleven(ish) striped chicks, all safely enclosed in one of our wood-and-chicken-wire coops.

Breaking the eggs

Our father began leaving during my pre-teen years. He sold the cows, let the fences lay where they fell, and stopped shoring up the barn and sheds. After he finished leaving, neglect cascaded into decay. Vines pulled down the chicken house and the gate fell off the pen.

Both pre- and post-chicken house era, egg gathering mistakes were inevitable. In the chaos of the crowded, rickety henhouse, broody laying hens stole eggs from the adjacent nests of setting hens. Predators and predator alarms rolled and bounced eggs between nest boxes. An egg laid by a setter a week or more ago, carefully incubated since, might end up alone in a layer’s nest. An egg laid by a layer last night might end up in a two-weeks-along setter’s nest.

After our flocks were entirely free-roaming, they hid their nests so well that eggs were often days old before being found. Eventually, increasing incidences of “bad eggs”, coupled with decreasing egg demand as siblings moved out, halted all egg collecting.

Late 1980s-era photograph of five large white eggs in a rough nest on the ground. The flat nest is made only of trampled grass and dry, dead weeds. The nest is positioned beneath an unused steel livestock gate that is leaning against the wall of a post-and-panel shed.
Photograph of five eggs, probably duck eggs, in a nest on the ground. This nest was tucked between an unused livestock gate and the outer corner of a shed.

The term “bad eggs” most obviously referred to rotting or rotten eggs. The kind that burst on their own or floated in water. But “bad eggs” also encompassed fertilized eggs that were mistakenly collected mid-incubation.

When an incomplete carcass, some mid-development stage of a chick or duckling, spilled from an egg I had cracked, I writhed with regret. It happened often enough, in my early years, that I still crack eggs into a separate bowl when cooking.

After our egg-collecting years ended, our increasingly feral flock was left to hatch and raise what young they could in whatever nests they chose.

Late 1980s-era photograph of a gray-and-tan feathered game hen with black tail feathers. The hen is setting on a nest that she made in a deep pile of straw left in the bottom of a large wooden box that once held bales of straw. The colors in this photograph are over-bright due to using a flashbulb on the camera, and the image is somewhat blurry.
A late 1980s photo of a game hen (conveniently named “Game Hen”) sitting a nest of eggs in a straw-lined box.
Late 1980s-era photograph of the inside of an ancient out-of-service livestock trailer that served as a shed for storing straw, hay, and feed. The trailer's flooring is wooden planks laid between steel bars. A massive, open-topped wooden crate/box is positioned in the middle of the trailer, an overturned tin can is on the floor in front of the box, and a large weathered 50-gallon oil drum is to the right. Game Hen is perched at the entryway, looking out. A reddish hen is perched on the edge of the large box, and another hen (mostly in shadow) is perched on the oil drum's closed lid. In the far background, shadows and reflections show equipment, bottles, and boxes stored (and long forgotten) on a shelf. The massive box once held bales of straw, but by this time held only a deep bed of leftover straw which was used by the cats and chickens for warm bedding. The oil drum held bags of feed. We kept the trailer doors closed, most of the time, but there were plenty of holes through the sides and bottom that the chickens, cats, rats, and opossums used for entry- and exit-ways.
A late 1980s view inside the “trailer” (a dilapidated, out-of-service livestock trailer that we treated as a bonus shed for feed storage). The massive wooden open-topped box/crate (center frame) once held bales of straw, so it was lined with broken bales. Inside this box, in the right back corner, was Game Hen’s nest.
Late 1980s-era photograph of 11 white eggs and 7 brown eggs in a nest made of straw. This was Game Hen's nest to sit, though the eggs were likely provided by multiple hens. The nest was in the far back-right corner of a massive open-topped wooden crate/box the sat in the middle of the ancient out-of-service livestock trailer we used for straw, hay, and feed storage.
The same late 1980s nest, photographed after bribing Game Hen with feed. Heaped in the nest are 11 white eggs and 7 brown eggs. The hens literally shared prime nesting spots.
Late 1980s-era photograph of a golden-eyed black-and-white cat (Mischief) nursing a newborn litter of kittens. All are settled in a deep, warm nest of straw, loosely lined with an old blue shirt. There are five kittens, three tortoiseshell and two solid white (destined to develop silver-and-gray "points" typical of siamese, but with the much longer hair typical of ragdoll cats). This litter of kittens was delivered and nursed in the massive wooden open-topped crate/box that we used to store straw in the ancient out-of-service livestock trailer that served as our feed shed.
Another late 1980s-era photograph, taken in the exact same spot in the trailer’s box of straw as the above nest photos. This is my cat Mischief nursing a newborn litter of five beautiful kittens. Two of these kittens will reappear later in this post, in a photo taken after they were grown.

Growing up in rural Tennessee, eating the animals and dissociating

While my egg-mistake memories are mostly visual, wetly curled bodies in a puddle of albumin, my memories of chicken, squirrel, and rabbit carcasses are sticky with remorse and smell like blood, grease, and guilt left out in the sun.

But expressing regret, remorse, or guilt at the table was forbidden. So was refusing to eat what was served. I don’t remember being told these rules, nor do I remember hearing these rules explained to my siblings. For that matter, I don’t remember learning these rules.

It is this lack of learning, this full memory cache with no record of creation, that warrants using the word “dissociated”. As a girl growing up in rural Tennessee, I dissociated from the eggs and meat on our table.

I coped with my forbidden regret, remorse, and guilt by inventing a private delusion, by defining eggs and meat as a different form of matter than living animals.

Mid-to-late-1980s-era photograph of our back yard, taken in late winter/early spring (indicated by the budding saplings in the background). Our small mixed flock of chickens, ranging in color from red-and-black to solid white, are resting, foraging, and roaming around the trunks and roots of a massive maple tree. An ancient out-of-service aluminum-sided livestock trailer is parked to the left, our wire-and-chain-link dog pen is in the left background, and a weathered old doghouse is in the middle background (used by cats, chickens, and yard dogs for warmth).
Mid-1980s photograph of our mostly free-roaming flock. We wouldn’t have eaten many of their eggs, in their later years, and their tough old carcasses would have been among the last added to the freezer. The trailer is visible to the left, with the dog pen behind it. The derelict chicken pen is hidden in the far center background, behind the row of saplings and shrub-like weeds.

Depression on top of dissociation

The photo immediately below is more metaphor than image. The worn paint and sagging shingles on our house and concrete-block wellhouse, the decaying barn-remnants to the far right, the unkempt pasture and yard, and the overgrowth marking downed fences. All of these illustrate the state of our dysfunctional household during my teen and young adult years.

A late-1980s or early-1990s-era photograph of our back yard. The edge of the house is just in view to the left, with worn paint on the wooden siding and facia boards. The concrete-block wellhouse, with its wide concrete stoop, sits just behind the house. Here, the wellhouse's roof is in bad disrepair, sagging with rot. Two cats and a hen are perched on the wellhouse, waiting to be fed. The yard is patchy, with some areas of dead grass and some areas of overgrown grass. The crumbled and rotting remains of a sloped loading chute and our barn are visible to the far right, and a heap of discarded debris (the remains of a fallen pole shed roof, the old pig pen fence, the old pig shed, and one wall of the barn) is thinly hidden behind a tall (>6 foot) curtain of dead brush. The woods in the far background are winter-bare.
A late 1980s- or early 1990s-era photo taken in the back yard. Perched atop our concrete block wellhouse, two cats and a red hen are waiting to be fed. The cats, Annie (right, tortoiseshell colored) and Gizmo (left, ragdoll marked) grew up out of the exact trailer-straw litter pictured above. The hen, whose name I’ve lost to time, was one of Game Hen’s daughters.

The hungry cats and hen on the wellhouse roof, waiting for a meal of table scraps and cheap kibble, are confusion, sorrow, and loneliness. This was the era of boyfriend venison and day-old bread. Of freezers stocked from clearance ads. Of oldest sister tending the garden in the dark of too-early mornings and too-late evenings because she was working three jobs while going to college.

We no longer ate the livestock we raised and loved, but clearance-case chicken and ground beef added a new facet to my dissociation. Grocery eggs and meat were always cold and bloodless, had never been embodied in the yard. And I had learned what it meant to be hungry.

Re-associating, for health reasons

Or, “Thanks for the genes, Dad”

My father died of heart disease at the age of 52. I was mid-teens, and he seemed so old. But he wasn’t old. I am, currently, older than 52.

I don’t feel so old.

I like being me, and I would like to continue being me for some good long number of years past 52.

Perseverating on 52

One of the ways I’ve packaged and carried grief is a fixation on 52nd birthdays. As each of my four older siblings passed 52, I breathed a bit easier. Long before I reached 52, I began researching and planning. Partly because of the grief fixation, but also because my cholesterol levels have been alarming physicians since I was a teen.

Note to father: Next time, maybe try leaving us money, instead.

Statins and exercise are no match for my father’s genes. My last resort for living past 52 was a complete overhaul of my diet. (I should have started there, but I’m a silly human with silly human habits.)

Call it plant based. Call it vegetarian. Call it desperation.

An unexpected side-effect of my diet overhaul has been re-associating with animal protein. My health ambitions were easier to realize when I reminded myself that pork is slaughtered pigs. That beef is slaughtered cows. That chicken is slaughtered chickens. That grocery eggs come from hens housed in industry conditions, not back yards.

Without my dad’s cholesterol, I would probably still perceive meat and living stock as unrelated forms of matter.

Enter the Mallards

Timing is everything, and my various perspectives and journeys are not random. If you are still reading, you might be starting to see a signal. Or not.

What looks like signal to me likely looks like noise to others.

Perhaps in a later post I’ll explain how a literature search through the history of prion testing catalyzed an ongoing reaction between a brood of suburban ducklings, a fetish-level case of nostalgia, a dysfunctional family history, and a stubborn set of lipid genes, resulting in this multi-part Mallard post.

Photo from the spring of 2024, of a Mallard hen and her brood of ducklings swimming in the dragonfly pond. Here the hen is reaching up, tugging seeds from a long grass seedhead that had sagged over the pond's edge. One of her ducklings is reaching up, sampling the grassy seeds, while the others are milling around, watching.
In this photo from the spring of 2024, a female Mallard duck shows her brood how to eat grass seeds from a seedhead dangling over the dragonfly pond.

For the present, I’m a recovering carnivore lured to herbivory by a longing to live past 52. I grew up in a rural environment where the animal protein on our table came from our own yard, pasture, and woods. And I’ve known what it is to be hungry.

These perspectives matter, though it’s not entirely up to me to decide how they matter.

In the next episode…

Mallard hunting is big business.

Image scanned from my great aunt's photo album. This black-and-white photo, vaguely sepia-toned, shows a man in thick winter garb—newsboy(?) hat, hunting jacket (lots of pockets), bulky pants, and worn boots—holding a long gun and two dead Mallard ducks. In the album, a hand-printed caption on an adjoining photo identified this man as Harry Kenyon.
Early 1900s photograph of a duck hunter holding a gun and two dead Mallards. This photograph was scanned from a great aunt’s photo album. The hunter’s name was Harry Kenyon. I do not know who he was or how his image landed in my great aunt’s photo album.

2. While I’m perfectly awful at recognizing genetic and cultural heritages based on peoples’ features and clothes, I recognize that this distant cousin doesn’t look or dress like my grandmother’s family. I would love to know more about her. (Click here to return to your regularly scheduled photo caption.)

3. My parents believed weasels were the chickens’ craftiest predators, blaming almost all egg, chick, and hen losses on an invisible and trackless family of mustelid carnivores, traceable only by scent. Years later, I realized that the scent I was taught to identify as “weasel” covered everything from the musk of a water snake to fox scat to mouse urine. (Click here to return to your regularly scheduled paragraph.)

Focusing on Mallards. Part I: The Flight Muscles

Rae Spencer2 Comments

While the yard didn’t have its very own Mallard nest, this year, we had regular visits from a hen who nested in the neighbor’s yard. Throughout April, the hen stopped in to graze and have a bath in the dragonfly pond. Then, on the morning of April 30, she brought along her brood of nine.

Photo of a Mallard hen standing beside our dragonfly pond. Almost hidden in her shadow are nine ducklings, huddled for a nap after a busy excursion in the pond.
Photo of a Mallard hen standing beside our dragonfly pond. Almost hidden in her shadow are nine ducklings, huddled for a nap after a busy excursion in the pond.
A Mallard hen (far right) swims with her nine ducklings in our dragonfly pond on April 30, 2024. The hen is mostly in shadow, her head in silhouette as she forages with her brood.
A Mallard hen (far right) swims with her nine ducklings in our dragonfly pond on April 30, 2024. The hen is mostly in shadow, her head in silhouette as she forages with her brood.

Where I started this multi-part post, and why

Spring often brings Mallards to our yard. March after March, April after April, May after May, pairs of Mallards wander in for a nap or a drink or a meal. Last spring, one pair stayed to nest. This year, there was the next-door nest.

Photo of three downy, day-old Mallards swimming in our dragonfly pond. One duckling faces the camera lens, a drop of water hanging under its bill. The light pink remnant of its egg tooth is visible.
Photo of three downy, day-old Mallards swimming in our dragonfly pond. One duckling faces the camera lens, a drop of water hanging under its bill. The light pink remnant of its egg tooth is visible.

Watching the next-door hen sit her nest day after day, watching her amble into our yard to bathe and eat, I wondered about her flight muscles. All told, with about a month on the nest and maybe two months more until her ducklings can fly, she’s grounded for three months. That’s a quarter of her year. What happens to her vital flight muscles during that time? Are stretching and flap-bathing enough to keep a Mallard’s muscles in flight condition?

As I’ve noted before, I can’t resist a bit of research…

Photo of the Mallard hen enjoying a vigorous bath in our dragonfly pond on April 30, 2024. Here, her head, chest, and wings are lifted out of the water as she flaps furiously against the surface, churning the water into sprays. One of her ducklings (far right) is just visible through the splashes.
Photo of the Mallard hen enjoying a vigorous bath in our dragonfly pond on April 30, 2024. Here, her head, chest, and wings are lifted out of the water as she flaps furiously against the surface, churning the water into sprays. One of her ducklings (far right) is just visible through the splashes.
Photo of the Mallard hen, still indulging in her vigorous bath. She has moved to the other end of the small pond as she continues to splash with her wings. A duckling watches from the foreground (lower left), safely anchored on the surrounding rocks.
Photo of the Mallard hen, still indulging in her vigorous bath. She has moved to the other end of the small pond as she continues to splash with her wings. A duckling watches from the foreground (lower left), safely anchored on the surrounding rocks.
Another photo of the Mallard hen, still bathing. Here she is leaning into her bath, wings clapping against the water hard enough to throw spray under her feathers.
Another photo of the Mallard hen, still bathing. Here she is leaning into her bath, wings clapping against the water hard enough to throw spray under her feathers.
Yet another photo of the Mallard hen, here nearing the end of her bath. She is standing tall in the water facing the camera, wings extended behind her, showing the white feathers on the underside of her wings.
Yet another photo of the Mallard hen, here nearing the end of her bath. She is standing tall in the water facing the camera, wings extended behind her, showing the white feathers on the underside of her wings.
Photo of the Mallard hen stretching her wings after enjoying a splashy bath. She is standing tall in the water, facing away from the camera, both wings at full extension. The tops of her wings are visible, complete with patches of deep blue feathers on each wing.
Photo of the Mallard hen stretching her wings after enjoying a splashy bath. She is standing tall in the water, facing away from the camera, both wings at full extension. The tops of her wings are visible, complete with patches of deep blue feathers on each wing.

I haven’t found any research into the changes (or lack of changes) in the flight muscles of nesting Mallard hens. That doesn’t mean this research isn’t out there. I simply haven’t found it. (I’m still searching.) But I did find a lot about flight muscles, and an article about flight muscle changes in molting, captive barnacle geese. (I’ll get to the geese in a later post.)

I’ll start with anatomy, because that always seems a reasonable place to start.

Unless you’re a duckling, then maybe start with the duck version of situational awareness. The world is a dangerous place for Mallards.

Photo of the Mallard hen teaching her ducklings to look overhead for danger. Whenever a crow or hawk flew over, she tilted one eye toward the sky (as seen in this photo) and gave a sharp quack. The ducklings froze in place, when they heard that quack, and they soon began to mimic her skywatching behavior.
Photo of the Mallard hen teaching her ducklings to look overhead for danger. Whenever a crow or hawk flew over, she tilted one eye toward the sky (as seen in this photo) and gave a sharp quack. The ducklings froze in place, when they heard that quack, and they soon began to mimic her skywatching behavior.
Photo of the Mallard hen teaching her ducklings to look overhead for danger. Here, one of the babies is copying its mother's tilt of head, one eye turned to the sky.
Photo of the Mallard hen teaching her ducklings to look overhead for danger. Here, one of the babies is copying its mother’s tilt of head, one eye turned to the sky.
Photo taken the next day, May 1, 2024, after the Mallard hen and her brood returned from spending their first night on the big water. They basked and bathed in our little water for one last calm day, but were not completely free of danger. Here, the hen has flattened herself in the grass at the pond's edge, her wide and wary eye skyward, while a Bald Eagle passed high overhead. This was her most extreme reaction, while I was watching, but it was the ducklings' least attentive response. A few of them glanced upward, but they didn't freeze in place. Instead they continued to fidget and stretch in preparation for a nap. I wondered if they couldn't see the eagle, as it was too high for my camera to find with autofocus.
Photo taken the next day, May 1, 2024, after the Mallard hen and her brood returned from spending their first night on the big water. They basked and bathed in our little water for one last calm day, but were not completely free of danger. Here, the hen has flattened herself in the grass at the pond’s edge, her wide and wary eye skyward, while a Bald Eagle passed high overhead. This was her most extreme reaction, while I was watching, but it was the ducklings’ least attentive response. A few of them glanced upward, but they didn’t freeze in place. Instead they continued to fidget and stretch in preparation for a nap. I wondered if they couldn’t see the eagle, as it was too high for my camera to find with autofocus.

Flight muscles in birds

Bird flight is powered by chest muscles. Each wing needs one muscle to raise the wing and another muscle to lower the wing. Two wings, two muscles per wing, four muscles in total. All in the chest.

Pretend your arms are wings. Now try mimicking flight. Can you feel your chest and back muscles moving? Now imagine you are a bird. All that flying, with only chest muscles at work.

Huh?

Birds have one upstroke muscle per wing…

Photo of the Mallard hen stretching her wings. In this photo, both wings are raised, meaning the upstroke muscles for each wing are contracting (shortening) while the downstroke muscles are relaxing (lengthening).
Photo of the Mallard hen stretching her wings. In this photo, both wings are raised, meaning the upstroke muscles are contracting (shortening) while the downstroke muscles are relaxing (lengthening).

…and one downstroke muscle per wing…

Photo of the Mallard hen, stretching her wings. Here she is shifting from a completed downstroke into an upstroke. The downstroke muscles are beginning to relax and lengthen, while the upstroke muscles are beginning to contract and shorten. Her wings and flight feathers are positioned to minimize air resistance on the upstroke.
Photo of the Mallard hen, stretching her wings. Here she is shifting from a completed downstroke into an upstroke. The downstroke muscles are beginning to relax and lengthen, while the upstroke muscles are beginning to contract and shorten. Her wings and flight feathers are positioned to minimize air resistance on the upstroke.

…groups of smaller muscles coordinate fine movements of flight feathers and joint angles, but power for flight lies in the muscles of the chest. The downstroke and upstroke muscles stretch, one on top of the other, between the sternum (the breastbone) and the humerus (the first and largest wing bone). One downstroke muscle and one upstroke muscle on the left side of the chest, for the left wing. One downstroke muscle and one upstroke muscle on the right side of the chest, for the right wing. If you eat poultry, these muscles are the breast meat.

Photo of the Mallard hen watching over her brood as they settle for a nap after an excursion in our dragonfly pond. I'm not here to preach against meat-eating, or against hunting. Both are part of the world, and both have been part of my world. But baby duck cuteness is part of why I am happier, here in my middle years, as a herbivore.
Photo of the Mallard hen watching over her brood as they settle for a nap after an excursion in our dragonfly pond. I’m not here to preach against meat-eating, or against hunting. Both are part of the world, and both have been part of my world. But baby duck cuteness is part of why I am happier, here in my middle years, as a herbivore.

Birds’ outermost chest muscles, the ones closest under the skin, are the downstroke muscles. They’re called the right and left pectoralis. They connect the sternum to the humerus on each side. When contracted, or shortened, these muscles pull the wings down. This anatomy is as straightforward as muscular anatomy gets. Sternum to humerus. When the muscles contract, they pull each humerus toward the sternum and the wings go down. A simple mechanism for a simple downstroke.

Flight anatomy gets its magic in the other flight muscles, the upstroke muscles. They’re called the right and left supracoracoideus. These muscles, nestled beneath the right and left pectoralis, also connect the sternum to humerus. But each upstroke muscle condenses into a tendon, as it nears its associated shoulder, and threads through a triosseal canal. A “three bone canal”. This canal lets each tendon emerge behind and over its associated shoulder, essentially passing from chest to back, before attaching to the top of the humerus.

This anatomical upstroke slight-of-hand, accomplished via the shoulder’s “three bone canal”, allows a pair of chest muscles to function like a pair of back muscles. When the upstroke muscles contract, or shorten, they pull the humerus away from the sternum so the wing goes up. An elegant mechanism for a simple upstroke.

Photo, from May 1, 2024, of the Mallard hen taking another vigorous bath in the dragonfly pond. Her ducklings (right foreground) bob on rough water and scatter to avoid being swamped as she churns up waves and spray with her strong wings. All of her wing power rests in her chest muscles.
Photo, from May 1, 2024, of the Mallard hen taking another vigorous bath in the dragonfly pond. Her ducklings (right foreground) bob on rough water and scatter to avoid being swamped as she churns up waves and spray with her strong wings. All of her wing power rests in her chest muscles.

If you think of a mechanical pulley system, the upstroke tendon would be the rope that runs over the wheel, while shoulder bones would be the wheel. Contracting, or shortening, the upstroke muscle is like pulling down on your end of the rope. The tendon slides over the bones, like the rope sliding over the wheel, and the wing (or the load you are lifting) rises up.

Presto.

The following video makes it much clearer (animation of the supracoracoideus and pectoralis starts at 3:59 and ends at 4:36).

Embedded YouTube video from medical illustrator Kelly Kage. A thesis video about the mechanics of bird flight, the video begins by describing skeletal anatomy, then moves into an animation of flight muscles at about three minutes and fifty seconds. Animation of the supracoracoideus and pectoralis begins at about 3:59 and ends about a minute later, at around 4:36. The entire video is nine-and-a-half minutes long. (I recommend the entire video, when you have time. The animations and narration are excellent.)

Bird flight isn’t exactly magic, but it’s mighty magical.

Why am I so fascinated?

An earlier version of myself, somewhere in my early twenties, taught a single semester of Introductory Zoology lab to undergraduates. (I was technically a graduate student at the time, but only because I needed two graduate courses to complete my prerequisites for veterinary school. I had no intention of finishing a Master’s degree.)

My most vivid memory, from my (thankfully) brief stint as a lab instructor, is the supracoracoideus exercise. I remember the uncanny slip of knowledge and knowing gliding across each other. The cognitive dissonance of trying to imagine a pair of flight muscles on my own chest.

Flex a chest muscle, and the wing goes down. Flex a different chest muscle, and the wing goes up.

Wing down. Wing up.

Chest. Chest.

Photo of a two-day old mallard duckling exercising its wing muscles. Here, with wings raised, the upstroke muscles in its chest are contracting while the downstroke muscles in its chest are relaxed. Photo taken May 1, 2024.
Photo of a two-day old mallard duckling exercising its wing muscles. Here, with wings raised, the upstroke muscles in its chest are contracting while the downstroke muscles in its chest are relaxed. Photo taken May 1, 2024.
Photo of a two-day-old Mallard duckling exercising its wing muscles. In this frame, the wings are early in the downstroke phase, meaning the little bird's downstroke muscles are beginning to contract while the upstroke muscles are beginning to relax.
Photo of a two-day-old Mallard duckling exercising its wing muscles. In this frame, the wings are early in the downstroke phase, meaning the little bird’s downstroke muscles are beginning to contract while the upstroke muscles are beginning to relax.

[Full disclosure: I was a bad teacher. I was both stupid and ignorant. I feared my human empathy, so I had conditioned myself to ignore the body language, verbal cues, and emotions of people around me. And I never thought to apply imagination to the teaching guide. I never thought to have my students move their own arms and feel their own muscles, then try to imagine the upstroke as a chest muscle, instead of a back muscle. As a tension through the shoulder while a tendon slides. If this post ever reaches any of my unfortunate students, I want to thank them for their patience and attention. They showed up, week after week. They showed up and they tried to learn what they needed, despite being burdened with an incompetent lab instructor. I know an apology is not enough. Even so, I’m sorry.]

Photo of a two-day-old Mallard duckling swimming in our dragonfly pond. The duckling is gazing at the camera lens from behind a rock. The facial markings of a Mallard duckling, with dark eye stripes over yellow down, make the babies look grumpy from this angle. I imagine my students felt grumpy, and likely overwhelmed, after each of my class sessions. I would have felt angry and betrayed, had I been my own student.
Photo of a two-day-old Mallard duckling swimming in our dragonfly pond. The duckling is gazing at the camera lens from behind a rock. The facial markings of a Mallard duckling, with dark eye stripes over yellow down, make the babies look grumpy from this angle. I imagine my students felt grumpy, and likely overwhelmed, after each of my class sessions. I would have felt angry and betrayed, had I been my own student.

The muscular choreography of bird flight is nothing like what I had imagined and mimicked, as a child. Not pushing my arms down with chest muscles and pulling them up with back muscles. Not a rowing cycle, over and over. Every time I pretended my arms were wings, my chest and back muscles cooperated. But for birds, it’s all chest. Chest muscles down and chest muscles up.

Photo of the Mallard hen with her brood scattered about her. In this photo, some of the ducklings are sleeping, some are fidgeting, and some are practicing preening. The hen is watching me and my camera with her head turned to one side, one eye focused directly on me. I can't help but imagine an internal monologue for her. "What is wrong with this human? Why is she so nosy? Should I be afraid?"
Photo of the Mallard hen with her brood scattered about her. In this photo, some of the ducklings are sleeping, some are fidgeting, and some are practicing preening. The hen is watching me and my camera with her head turned to one side, one eye focused directly on me. I can’t help but imagine an internal monologue for her. “What is wrong with this human? Why is she so nosy? Should I be afraid?”

Even today, despite my long familiarity with bird anatomy, I struggle to imagine how flight must feel. When I read about science fiction and fantasy creatures with wings, especially dragons, I usually forget to wonder about the musculature that powers fictional flight. But, in moments when I do pause to wonder, my imagination becomes richer.

A preview of Part II: More about Mallards and their flight muscles

So here is a duckling, with its clever wings and wing muscles, destined for flight. How it proceeds, how it uses those wings and wing muscles, determines how bulky the wing muscles must be. Or, do I have it backward? Do the wing muscles, with their relative bulks, determine how the duckling must use its wings? As with much, when it comes to physiology, the answer is a loop. The relative bulk of wing muscles influences how a duck might use its wings, and the ways a duck uses its wings influences the relative bulk of its muscles. Part II will have more about flight muscles, more about Mallards, and more photos of these ridiculously cute ducklings.

Photo of sleepy Mallard ducklings, one with a webbed foot stretched into the sunlight. If you are still reading, thank you.
Photo of sleepy Mallard ducklings, one with a webbed foot stretched into the sunlight. If you are still reading, thank you.

The following links lead to articles and posts that are more important and more interesting that my Mallard musings:

Alien life is no joke by Adam Frank at Aeon

No one buys books by Elle Griffin at The Elysian

Scalzi on film: The Godzilla Beeper by John Scalzi at Uncanny

Back in 2015, I knowingly blew up my life by Pamela Gray at Star Strider (hat tip to Science for Everyone)

What is it like to be a crab? by Kristin Andrews at Aeon

Moving beyond ontological (worldview) supremacy: Indigenous insights and a recovery guide for settler-colonial scientists by Coen Hird, Dominique M. David-Chavez, Shanny Spang Gion, and Vincent van Uitregt at Journal of Experimental Biology

Necrosecurity, Immunosupremacy, and Survivorship in the Political Imagination of COVID-19 by Martha Lincoln at Open Anthropological Research

In a New England pond, toxic algae is disrupting tribal heritage by Eve Zuckoff at CAI

The Unwild Mallards

Rae SpencerLeave a comment

Each spring, our semi-wild population of suburb mallards leave their lakes, ponds, and canals in search of private nesting habitats. This local migration often brings pairs of mallards to the yard, though none have stayed to nest. Until this year.

In this photo, taken April 29, five baby mallards huddle under their mother as she stands on a rock beside our pond. A sixth baby sits on the next rock over. These mallard ducklings were less than 18 hours out of the egg and are only half of the clutch. Six more babies were waiting in the nest behind their siblings.

Less than a week after I posted about the dragonfly pond, a pair of mallards arrived and began redecorating the pond. They shoved rocks from the border, collapsed minnow caves, uprooted plants, stirred sediment into columns of mud, and added enough nutrient (in the form of duck poop) to start a massive algae bloom.

In this photo, taken March 3, a pair of semi-wild mallards visit the pond. The male mallard floats near the center of the pond, preening his wings, while the female searches for underwater food. The water is still relatively clear and the pond‘s rocks and plants are still somewhat in place.
This photo, taken March 7, shows the view from our kitchen window as the mallards nap in the pond. Both ducks have their heads resting along their backs, beaks tucked into the feathers between their wings. The water is turbid and dark, with scattered remnants of uprooted plants. The rocks are still mostly in place, though that didn’t last.
Photo of the pond, taken March 14, showing filthy greenish-brown water. The pond heater is still deployed, though I removed it shortly after. A board shaped like a fish floats in the far end of the pond.1

The dragonfly pond soon looked and smelled like a cattle pond.

The ducks ate everything they could catch in the water. Minnows and dragonfly larvae, damselfly larvae and snails. Anything that swam or wriggled.2

We shooed and herded the pond-wrecking mallards, who returned day after day for further wreckage. I complained to family and friends about the mallards’ destructive invasion, but I also hoped for a nest. Truth be told, I always hope for nests. Plus, I have nostalgic affection for ducks.

This photo3 shows me at some early elementary school age, complete with crooked bangs, ill-fitting shorts and halter top, knobby knees, and a welter of mosquito bites. I’m holding our pet duck Fred, who was very spoiled.
This photo, dated 1975, shows a group of mature white ducks in our Tennessee back yard.
In this later photo, probably late 1980s, three white geese and two black-and-white ducks amble past a newly delivered cord of winter wood in our Tennessee yard.4
This photo, dating to the late 1980s or early 1990s, shows three white geese, two black-and-white ducks, and three white ducks visiting their blue plastic wading pool in our Tennessee back yard.5

Hoping to lure the mallards away from the pond for at least a few hours each day, I purchased a blue plastic wading pool (definitely a theme in my lifelong efforts to keep waterfowl happy) and an extra bag of wild bird feed. Pool and feed in hand, I set up a duck station near the fence in our Virginia back yard, including steps for easy entry into the pool. Then I herded the mallards out of the pond and toward the pool.

In this photo from March 12, a blue plastic wading pool is wedged into the back seat of my car. Many thanks to the very patient Target employee who brought the wading pool out for curbside pickup and helped load it while we both fought off fits of the giggles because who buys a wading pool in March? For ducks? While masking and social distancing because COVID is not over? (I’ll add that COVID is still not over. Especially for families, like mine, who have immunocompromised households.)

Not surprisingly, the mallards saw peril in the duck station and refused to try the wading pool. At that point, the pair were still semi-wild, after all. They retreated into the pollinator beds and rummaged through duff when I was in the yard, then circled back to the pond when I went inside.

And the pond grew more and more fetid. (I had almost forgotten the smell of our chicken house in Tennessee, and sometimes the yard when our flocks grew too populous, but now I’ve been reminded.)

In this photo from March 14, the male mallard watches warily from behind the irises that shore up one end of the pond. Neither of the mallards tried the wading pool until after I quit trying to convince them to try the wading pool.

When the female mallard built her nest in the irises and began laying, we stopped all efforts to shoo or herd or otherwise interfere. Almost immediately, the mallards took to the wading pool for luxurious sessions of bathing and splashing.

Photo from March 21, showing the female mallard bathing in the wading pool as the male mallard stands guard.
Photo, dated April 14, showing the female mallard bathing in the wading pool as the male mallard stands guard.
Photo, dated April 18, showing both mallards in the wading pool.

Resigned to a lengthy mallard residency, we invested in a pump and filter for the pond. For the next month, I cleaned the pond filter daily, dumped and refilled the wading pool every other day, put out feed each morning and evening, and lingered in the kitchen window for hours on end, watching. The mallards hunted in the pond (and further rearranged the rocks), bathed and basked in the wading pool, ate their feed and grazed through the yard, and generally unwilded until they were as comfortable in the yard as our domestic flocks had been in the yard of my childhood home.

And while the mallards unwilded, the nest grew.

Photo, dated March 20, of the nest with a single egg.
Photo, dated March 28, of the nest with five eggs.
Photo, dated April 1, of the nest with nine eggs.

On April 1, with nine eggs in the nest, the female mallard settled to incubating. Giving up all pretense of productivity, I sat in the kitchen window, day after day. While she sat on her nest. Day after day.

Photo, dated April 14, of the female mallard on her nest.
Photo, dated April 18, of the eggs nestled in layers of down.
Photo, dated April 18, of the female mallard on her nest.

And then, on April 28, the hatching commenced. All afternoon the mallard fidgeted and turned and tended, eating some of the discarded shells and membranes, tucking the rest under the nest’s foundation of dried grasses. By nightfall the nest was filled with ducklings instead of eggs.

In this photo, taken April 28, a freshly hatched mallard is nestled deep into the downy feathers lining the nest. The female mallard is half-standing in the nest, with two still-unhatched eggs visible beneath her.
Here a duckling, still damp from hatching, is just visible under the female mallard as she stands in her nest.
Here the ducklings are getting their first views of the world from inside their nest, still guarded by their mother.

I set my alarm for sunrise the next morning, certain that the female mallard would lead her brood away as soon as the hatchlings were mobile enough. I didn’t want to miss a moment of their brief stay in the yard.

April 29. The now-fluffy-and-dry baby mallards peer out from around their mother as the little family begins to stir in their nest.
The baby mallards follow their mother from the nest for their first outing. In this photo, two babies hover under their mother as she stands on the rocks just in front of the nest.
All twelve eggs hatched seemingly healthy babies. Their first clamber down the rocks was eager for some and timid for others. In this photo, one of the eager ducklings takes an awkwardly long step down from the first rock.
The eager duckling from the previous photo experiences a bit of a rough landing in the water. The impromptu dive didn’t phase the duckling, which swam busily away.
The more timid ducklings took more care climbing down from the nest. In this photo, a group of three ducklings linger on the first rock as one of their siblings stretches a careful foot down toward the next step.
The ducklings tasted everything they found. Here, a baby mallard floats on the pond and nibbles at a long plant stem.
The fish-shaped board proved a popular resting spot for the ducklings as they practiced swimming and diving and eating. Here, two ducklings perch on the board while their siblings swim around them. The female mallard is just visible in frame, keeping an eye on her brood.
The ducklings also rested on the pond’s bordering rocks, which were warm from the sun. Here, four ducklings sit on the warm rocks.
A baby mallard, less than 24 hours out of the egg, perches on one of the warm rocks bordering our small dragonfly pond.
Exhausted after their first few swim lessons, the mallard family returned to their nest between adventures. Here, two of the babies have tipped over into awkward sleeping positions on the rocks while their siblings gather in the nest beneath the female mallard.

And, of course, they didn’t stay.

I followed the mallards as their mother led them out of the yard and down our street and through a playground and up the next street over to a house on a canal without a fenced back yard. The homeowner was working in his yard when our odd parade arrived, and he nodded and shrugged when I waved from the sidewalk across the street. He told me that mallard mothers lead their brood through his yard, the only unfenced yard along the canal, all spring long. They head for the canal despite its dangerous populations of snapping turtles, snakes, and bullfrogs large enough to eat a baby duck. We agreed that yards are safer but mallards need canals.

Then I trudged home alone, wishing for a world both more and less wild.

I was shocked when the mallard led her brood back, that evening. My husband saw them coming up the sidewalk and called for me. The female mallard had guided her dozen day-old ducklings out into the canal and back again, safe and tired. We opened the gate and welcomed them home, pond wreckage forever forgiven as the sleepy family spilled back into their nest.

The next morning they left for good, of course. The yard, for all of its unwild safety, is not meant for mallards. Nor are mallards meant for the yard.

They haven’t returned, and they won’t. At least, not as the same little family that left. But every mallard I see, for all my years to come, will be one of them.

The Unwild Mallards

The unwild mallards were stubborn and messy
Unwily in their need
And the pond was water enough for nesting

An unwild nest
In unwild irises

A quick meal and a bath
Then back to the nest

Days growing longer and hotter
In the unwild yard
With unwild waters

And then
The unwild dozen

That afternoon, they left
Then returned for one last night
Before they left for good

Heading toward the good wild waters
Where unwild mallards might learn
To be wild
Video comprised of still images and iPhone video clips of the mallards’ time in the yard. Text over the images repeats the poem printed above. The audio is a separate recording made in the yard as I edited this video. Traffic noise and wind dominate the audio, but crows and a blue jay make guest appearances.

Footnotes

1 We added the board after removing a commercial floating planter/island. We removed the island because it was ruined, then added the board because we felt sorry for the minnows that had enjoyed hanging out under the island. (Click here to go back.)

2 The ducks were not so efficient as to depopulate the minnows and invertebrates. I’m not certain how anything survived, between the feasting and the fouling, but some survived and carried on. Currently, the pond is teeming with baby minnows and every surface is clumped with snail eggs. (Click here to go back.)

3 This is another of my oldest sister’s “Rae with pets” series of photos, which span years and will likely continue to appear on this blog. In the background, two chickens and our shepherd make guest appearances. (Click here to go back.)

4 After our father left, the job of stacking wood fell to me. Mother purchased cut wood from a neighbor, who unloaded it in a heap. I would sort the wood by size and age, stacking it all in our pole shed. The freshest cuts went at the bottom of the pile (to age/cure) and the aged/cured wood at the top. The largest logs started at the left and the smallest kindling at the right. I even sorted the wood according to Mother’s lore: she believed that the hardest woods (usually hickory and oak) burned long and hot, the softer woods (often maple and hackberry, but sometimes others that I didn’t recognize) burned fast and cool, and the evergreens (pines and the occasional cedar) burned oily and deposited more creosote in the chimney. When bad weather was forecast, I brought days or weeks worth of wood to the porch, where it stayed drier than the shed. But Mother didn’t like keeping wood stacked on the porch because warm air escaping through the door woke the woodpile’s insects, who followed the warm air indoors. (I never had cause to doubt Mother’s wood fire lore and would likely stack wood by size and hardness, away from the porch, if we burned wood for heat today.) (Click here to go back.)

5 The wading pool was the closest thing they had to a pond. A second blue plastic wading pool, visible in the background, was in the dog pen and helped our dogs stay cool. The second pool also kept the dogs from digging under the fence because they wanted to play in water. (Click here to go back.)

I regret that I do not have a list of links, for this post, to articles and essays that are more important and more interesting than the small unfoldings in our small yard. I have been tired, of late, and taking a break from the larger world. I will resume reading and exploring and learning once I have regathered my energy, both emotional and physical. In the meantime, please post links of your own, to articles and essays that have helped you better understand the world. (Please also note that I screen comments.)

Sleep, eat, read… blog

Rae Spencer13 Comments

Yard December 30

When I didn’t put together a blog post in late October, I resolved to make up for it in November. After November passed without a post, I planned something for December. And when January loomed with the blog still silent, I finally admitted that I had been neglecting more than the blog. I wasn’t procrastinating. I was depressed. Again.

Yard December 30

My inertia started with procrastination, but, as the days grew shorter and shorter, depression took over. In retrospect, I knew this all along. I tried to ignore the symptoms, but in mid-October I had quit doing most of the things I enjoy. The blog was just my most public absence.

Flowers Nov 9

By November, the yard and I were weather-worn and brittle.

Flowers Nov 9

Flowers Nov 9

Off and on in November I picked up my camera, took a few photos, and thought vaguely of how I would describe them in a blog post. Each time I decided to pay bills or clean out the closet instead. (More often than not, I then decided to put off the bills and the closet, too.) So this photo of spider eggs never posted:

Eggs November 24

Nor this exquisite moth:

Moth Sept 17

I woke briefly in mid-November, when the Yellow-rumped Warblers arrived, but soon drifted back into my sleep-eat-read-sleep routine.

Warbler Nov 16

Squirrel Nov 9

Rabbit Nov 9

As December counted down, I told myself lies about how busy I was with holiday preparations.

Ornaments Dec 26 2015

I told others these lies, too, because they were easier than admitting to everyone that the holidays made me feel sad and lonely. That, despite my love for festive decorations, much of my nostalgia is tinged with grief.

Ornaments Dec 26 2015

During my lost months, I watched flocks of birds gather and move on, feeling each time as if I had missed an important message.

Flock Nov 20

Birds Nov 9

Crow Nov 9

Then, one bright and unseasonably warm afternoon, a pair of vultures paused over the yard, basking in the sun. These beautiful, under-appreciated birds sent me scrambling for my camera, something I had not done in weeks.

Vulture Dec 10

Vulture Dec 10

Vulture Dec 10

And on Christmas Eve, despite dreary clouds and a threat of storms, I enjoyed an afternoon in the yard with my camera.

Starling Dec 24

This time I felt closer to getting the message.

Birds Dec 24

In the after-Christmas lull, I slept and ate and read and slept, but there was a spark of something different in the routine. A current of ambition to do more than sleep and eat and read. As I put away our decorations, I noticed a pot of pansies that I had never planted. And all the empty bird feeders.

Muscovy Jan 3

On the first Sunday of 2016, I took a walk with my old camera. As I photographed ducks and geese and seagulls, my internal dialogue became a patter of possible captions for the photos. That evening I edited the images with extra care, eager to post them. But I couldn’t decide how to post them. The blog had been silent for so long. Now that I was ready to post again, how should I explain my absence? Should I simply resume posting? Gloss over two months fogged by recurring depression?

Merganser Jan 3

If I tried to explain, would I be able to describe depression without being depressing? (I don’t believe I’ve succeeded, but I decided to post this anyway. Too many people avoid talking about depression for too many reasons, which makes it that much lonelier.)

Heron Jan 3

I’ve lived with depression (and its frequent companion–anxiety) for a very long time. Longer than I’ll usually admit. Compared to past experience, this bout was mild and short-lived. Now I’m making changes that should help speed my recovery. Over the weekend I stocked the kitchen with healthier food, started exercising, and spent more time outside with my camera. These are, I’ve learned, my best defenses.

Seagull Jan 3

So as January progresses, along with a more mindful schedule of sleeping and eating and reading, I’ll be walking and writing and blogging. (And renewing my efforts to learn meditation. More on this later.)

Mallard Jan 3

And as the days get longer and longer, I’ll start looking forward to spring. Because spring will come. It always does.

Mallard Jan 3