Ducks have different shaped bills depending on their diet. A mallard’s for example, is long and broad; fitting their usual diet of invertebrates and gastropods (they’ll eat anything, but this is their most common food) – this style of beak is necessary to scoop up the area with the food – it would be extremely tricky to target a single nymph at the bottom of a pond!
Mallards have a wide variety of choices when it comes to food: invertebrates such as flies, caddisflies, dragonflies etc. worms and other crustaceans (there was one report in 1996 of a duck on the south bank eating an American crayfish!) and will even go for tubers and roots – if nothing else is on the menu, pondweed will do fine!
BY MAX DENT
DID YOU KNOW?
Mallards have a special ‘preen gland’ which secretes oil. This oil keeps the mallard’s feathers waterproof, and is how the saying ‘water off a duck’s back’ evolved.
diet