Hellow tweets,
As regards the eating habits of mallards, I was flabbergasted one
spring at McClane Creek park in Olympia, WA to see an adult male mallard
catch, macerate with its bill and then swallow a rough-skinned newt. The
ID of the bird and the newt were never in question, as it happened ten
feet away and took several minutes to accomplish. RS newts have an
incredibly poisonous toxin in their skin; even a digested nibble would
kill a lot of bigger animals. According to Bill Leonard, who was told
this story, next day there was most certainly one dead duck ( though I
never went back to check).
So yes, Mallards have cosmopolitan tastes in their food. And no
good judgement, either.
Janet Partlow
partlowj at elwha.evergreen.edu

On Tue, 13 Aug 1996, Ingrid Lae wrote:

> Yesterday evening, around 7PM, I was walking with my Mom, around Deer Lake
> in Burnaby, (a suburb of Vancouver, B.C. for those of you who don't know the
> area).
>
> We stopped at a place where there is access right up to the water, and were
> watching a couple of Osprey put on a tremendous fishing display, when
> suddenly there was a big commotion right at our feet. A female Mallard, who
> had been quietly paddling around right in front of us, was now upended and
> struggling with something beneath the water. She worked at it for a bit, and
> when she finally righted herself, there was the rear end of a fish
> protruding from her beak. Judging from the proportions of the end of the
> fish that we could see, it was about 4 inches long and was still alive and
> wiggling it's tail around. The Mallard looked a little perturbed and like
> she was going to gag, but eventually sort of choked the fish down.
>
> I have never seen a Mallard eat anything like this before and didn't think
> that fishing was their thing. When I got home, I looked in three field
> guides and "The Birder's Handbook" and none of them mentioned Mallards
> eating fish.
>
> Has anyone else ever witnessed anything like this? Is it a normal occurrance
> that I've just never seen before?
>
> Ingrid Lae
>
>
>