Duck Sex

For those who don't know, mallards are pretty aggressive this time of the year. They're kind of mean jerks most of the time, but late winter/early spring they are particularly bad. The reason for this increase in obnoxiousness is, obviously, because it's time for the ducks to start pairing up and mating.

I've been attending college for the better part of a decade. All of those campuses I've been at have duck ponds, with a ton of mallards, yet somehow I've never seen "the deed" being done. I'm not a wildlife voyeur mind you, but as someone who is interested in nature and spends a lot of time outside I just think it's kind of weird this has never happened. All that changed yesterday.

I went out for tea yesterday morning and wandered down to the bridge at the duck pond. I was pondering the mysteries of life enjoying my London Fog, and as I was standing there my friend Lee walked by and we chatted for a bit about ducks and Pleistocene fauna. As we were standing there I noticed something weird; I thought I had been observing two ducks, but for some reason I now only saw one duck sort of struggling in the water. It turns out that there WERE two ducks, but one was under water, beneath the other duck. It was a strange moment, one where it probably took me longer to figure out what was going on than it should have. Awkward.

The whole incident probably took all of 5 seconds, so the female wasn't in any real danger of drowning. But the most ridiculous part came at the end, when the male bit the female in the head and then did a victory lap around her.

I told you mallards were jerks.