My first thought was that it was courtship behavior, which fits with
the autumnal timing of Mallard pairing. But it's also interesting to
me that, after a couple of males start doing the hokey pokey, it is
the lone female toward the right side who really kicks things up. Now
I wish I'd taken more footage to see if that was a pattern ;(

Marc Hoffman
Kirkland, WA

At 10:25 PM 10/17/2011, notcalm at comcast.net wrote:
>Hello Marc,
>
>It is possible that this is another bathing behavior. I have seen
>other Mallards do this, even when they are alone. It appears that
>each species has stereotypical bathing behaviors- even though there
>may be much "overlap". On the same note, in September, I was
>capturing video of a Solitary Sandpiper at close range. It was
>bathing away and suddenly did a head fist standing dive and landed
>in a mirror image position and kept on bathing- apparently this is a
>behavior not uncommon with that species.
>
>Dan Reiff
>
>
>----------
>From: "Marc Hoffman" <tweeters at dartfrogmedia.com>
>To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
>Sent: Monday, October 17, 2011 6:24:03 PM
>Subject: [Tweeters] Frisky Mallard Behavior: WHY???
>
>Sunday Tina Blade and I visited Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge
>for several hours in the afternoon. We watched some very frisky
>Mallards splashing around the main pond and wondered what the story
>was: is this courtship, grooming, just plain fun, or what?
>
>Here's a link to a short video of the behavior:
><http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSIrN7SzScI&hd=1>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSIrN7SzScI&hd=1
>
>You can hear hunters shooting in the background, but really I could
>find no reason to suspect the birds were being startled.
>
>Marc Hoffman
>Kirkland, WA
><http://www.dartfrogmedia.com/photography>http://www.dartfrogmedia.com/photography
>mailto: tweeters at dartfrogmedia dot com
>
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