Duck Or Drake?

It depends on when you want to know says Chris Ashton

- Chris Ashton

The popular image of the mallard is the smart drake with the iridescent green head and white collar, rich claret chest and elegant grey flank feathers. He is in his nuptial or courting plumage, designed to attract a female with a quiver of the green head feathers, and flash of the blue wing bar as he displays to her in the breeding season. He wears this from early autumn through to the following spring, when, apart from the blue speculum, the other body feathers appear drab and blotchy.

The drake no longer needs the attractions when he slopes off in summer, leaving his mate to incubate the eggs, raise the family and do all the work. Males tend to loiter in single-sex groups in the summer months, until the season for pairing up in the autumn comes round again.

By mid-summer, all the mallards on the canal appear to be female. The drakes have moulted and are in disguise. Just to confuse you - and their predators - they have adopted juvenile-style feathers, which are very similar to those of the females. These brownish colours are better for camouflage, especially when the flight feathers are dropped around June/July, and fleeing the fox is not so easy. You can still tell that they are drakes if you look carefully at the bill colour: it stays green.

As well as losing the white collar and green head plumage, drakes also lose the curled sex feathers on the rump which changes from glossy black to a brown, more typical of the female. The feathers stay like this until the early autumn moult when the birds moult again and refresh their plumage for the next breeding season.

The ducks, too, moult their body feathers twice, but it’s far less obvious than in the male. They just look a little bit darker over the summer months as their hormones change. However, both sexes only drop their flight feathers once: these are crucial for their survival.