The Mallard Duck – Wildlife Wednesdays.
Our weekly dive into our beautiful Irish wildlife – This week is the Mallard Duck – The Lacha
Ah the Mallard Duck or Lacha, a firm favourite with everybody.
This series will help your family reconnect with Ireland’s unique and wonderful wildlife.
Each week we cover a new animal or bird that appears in the Johnny Magory book series.
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This week we cover the duck from Co. Kildare Ireland.
Here’s some key facts to recap on the Duck:
- The average lifespan is 10 years but the oldest recorded was 27 years.
- The mallard is one of Ireland’s most common ducks. It is also one of our largest ducks.
- Males have a striking green head, a yellow bill, white ring around the neck, grey underparts, blue speculum, and a black rump. Females are mainly brown.
- Their diet varies from seeds to insects and crustaceans to grain and stubble to human given foods.
- They will lay anything between 7-16 eggs once a year with the female incubating. She waits until the ducklings feathers are dry after hatching before bringing them for their first swim.
- Newly born duckling may be lost to crows, herons, magpies, pike and even large perch. Both the young and adult mallards are also the prey of foxes and mink.
- Males don’t quack, and instead produce deeper, raspier one and two note calls. They can also make rattling sounds by rubbing their bills against their flight feathers.
- Migrating Mallards have been clocked flying at 55 miles per hour usually cruising at an altitude of less than 10,000 feet. In 1962, a mallard was struck by a commercial airliner at 21,000 feet—a record altitude for a bird-aircraft collision at the time.
- Although the mallard are common, the population has also declined by over 40% in the last 20 years.
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