22 
ANAS BOSCHAS 
Flight. The Mallard is a fast, though not the fastest duck on the wing, for it is 
certainly excelled by the Pintail, Hooded Merganser, and many diving ducks. 
Nevertheless, in mixed flocks, the Mallard shows no tendency to lag behind, and 
keeps in even, compact formations with Pintail, Widgeon, Gadwall, Teal and other 
species. It rises with a sharp upward spring, from either land or water, to a height of 
from ten to fifteen feet in open country, and to a much greater height within a wood. 
It then flies off on a long ascending plane. The females, it should be noted, always 
quack when flushed. The wing-beats are not very rapid, of course much less so than 
in diving ducks or mergansers, and wdth a long up-and-down excursion, which pro- 
duces a sharp whistling sound, especially when heard during still frosty mornings. 
At such times, or on clear nights, the wings produce sounds almost as loud as those 
made by the Golden-eye. The wing-beats of the Mallard are slower than those of 
Teal, and it takes the larger duck much longer to pick up speed or change its course, 
but once on his way I do not think that the Teal can leave him behind. Sportsmen 
are inclined to give Teals credit for more speed than they actually possess, but it is 
really their low, twisting flight, the suddenness of their appearance and their small 
size, rather than their actual speed, which makes them so difficult to bring down. Un- 
fortunately there are no really reliable figures as to the speed of the Mallard over a 
measured course. It has been variously estimated from as low as forty or fifty miles 
to one hundred and twenty miles per hour, which last figure Audubon considers 
within the range of possibility. Baird, Brewer and Ridgway (1884) compute its 
speed as hardly less than a hundred miles per hour. Personally I believe there is a 
tendeney to exaggerate the speed at which they fly. I have many times seen Mal- 
lards and Black Ducks coming up wind during severe gales, when the velocity of the 
wind could not have been more than forty to fifty miles an hour, and at such times 
their progress was exceedingly slow, certainly not over five to ten miles per hour. I 
have even seen them unable to make any headway for many seconds at a time, but 
perhaps these birds, searching out sheltered places as they went, w^ere not exerting 
their full strength. An estimate of the speed of a Pintail is quoted by G. B. Grinnell 
(1901). The observation was made from a train running at fifty-two miles an hour, 
and the Pintail could exceed this speed at will. Another note by C. St. John (1882) 
tells of a Peregrine Falcon who w as unable to gain a yard on a Mallard during a long 
chase. Recently more careful tests of the speed of migrating ducks have been made 
(Meinertzhagen, 1921) and entirely contradict the wild guesses of early writers. In 
those tests the speed varied from 44 to 59 miles, and averaged around 50 miles. This 
does not differ greatly from the speed of migrating Canada Geese measured over 
a course by twm meteorologists, Messrs. S. P. Ferguson and H. H. Clayton. Their 
conclusion w’as that a speed of only 45 miles w’as obtained at an altitude of from 
900 to 1000 feet. 
There is very little real information as to the maximum height at which ducks fly. 
