Stories From Under The Sky

Man and the Mallard

man and the mallard LIKE ALL LIVING things, the mallard duck is the fruit of its environment. As that environment frowns or smiles, the mallard fails or flourishes. Modern man is also a product of environment, but unlike the mallard he is not content to simply exist within it. He must dominate it. As man frowns or smiles, all environments - including the mallard's - fail or flourish. The first mallard environment to be invaded by modern man was the flyway systems that link the northern breeding areas with the wintering grounds. But mallards are opportunists that are quick to see advantage in a new situation. As man has captured the waterfowl flyways the mallard has adapted itself to cornfields, reservoirs, farm ponds, and even popcorn handouts from kids in city parks. The ancient flyway routes became great pantries of corn, oats, soybeans, rice and wheat that are heavily used by migrant and resident mallards. Much of this is waste; it's been estimated that ten percent of the midwestern corn crop may be left in the fields, and the canny mallard is quick to find it. However, mallards can also cause serious depredation of unharvested crops where man has usurped their natural feeding grounds. Hardy and resistant to cold, often lingering in the north long after other ducks have headed south, they may ravage croplands day or night. In Colorado, where I Y2 million mallards congregated in January on the Arkansas and Platte River drainages, it was estimated that the huge flocks had a daily capacity of $4,500 worth of com. The annual California rice loss to ducks may amount to a million dollars, with $750.000 more lost in other cereal grains, alfalfa and lettuce. Most of this damage is due to pintails, but mallards get their share. Special hunting seasons have been set in an effort to curb mallard crop damage, and Arkansas schoolboys used to take shotguns to school and be picked up in late afternoon by farm trucks that drove them to the rice fields for the daily bout with flocks of hungry mallards. The most serious mallard damage is in the southern Canadian prairie provinces where clouds of mallards raid wheat fields. This is nothing new, but it has become more serious since 1945. High post-war grain prices caused farming to expand into mallard nesting grounds where large concentrations of ducks quickly acquired a taste for corn and wheat. To make matters worse, many Canadian farmers now swath wheat before it is combined, rather than cutting it with binders and shocking it. This swathed wheat, strewn over miles of prairie, is a picnic for ducks. Some Canadian farm losses have run as high as eighty percent. In three municipalities in Saskatchewan - averaging eleven townships in size - annual mallard damage has amounted to nearly $275,000. To farmers who may lose an average of one wheat crop in seven to mallards, ducks become implacable enemIes. Just as the mallard is swift to exploit man-made fields IOS that have replaced his natural feeding grounds, he is quick to find man-made water areas that appear along the flyways. Mallards use countless stock ponds and farm ponds that did not exist a few years ago. In South Dakota, artificial stock ponds may produce at least 200,000 ducks a year, and irrigated lands on the west coast offer grassy-banked ditches to nesting mallards. An immense mallard-holding force is exerted by the chain of reservoirs up the Missouri River. Mallards stay on these huge impoundments all winter if nearby feeder fields are clear of ice and snow, and large segments of the southbound flights are halted by such areas as Fort Randall, Gavin 's Point, Fort Peck, Lake Andes and others. On December 22, 1958, over a million ducks were counted on the Fort Randall reservoir and it was estimated that year that 1,300,000 ducks wintered in South Dakota. From 1955 to 1958, a December average of 831,000 ducks was found on the Fort Randall impoundment alone. New lakes, ponds and reservoirs - and a hardbitten disregard for winter - keep many mallards in the north. Nearly three million of them were censused during January, 1956, in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa and Missouri; and within this region there were more mallards wintering north of the Ohio River than south of it. No other duck is so rugged a pioneer...