DUCKS, GEESE, AND SWANS: MALLARD 
111 
marshes, as they were observed from the trains; and on July 14, 1918, an old one 
followed by eight young about two weeks old was seen a mile southeast of Socorro 
(Ligon).] 
The flocks begin to arrive from the north late in August and during the fall 
migration they range to the tops of the Chuska Mountains above 8,000 feet, and to 
about 9,500 feet in the Brazos Canyon of the San Juan Mountains (Bailey). [Be¬ 
tween Socorro and Albuquerque, August 28 and September 4, 1917, many were 
seen (Ligon).J They are most common from late September through October. 
Common at Clapham and Perico, November 15, and a male shot from a bunch of 
seven, December 26, 1893 (Seton). [In 1917 and 1918 they were the commonest 
ducks on the Rio Grande near Albuquerque during the shooting season (Leopold).] 
Their numbers decrease in November but many remain all winter in southern 
New Mexico and are reported near Fort Thorn (Henry), Mesilla (Merrill), Albu¬ 
querque, January 15, 1894 (Loring), and near Bear Canyon, east of the San Andres 
Mountains, January 15, 1903 (Gaut). These places are from 3,800 to 5,500 feet 
altitude. Along Cuchillo Creek, between Chloride and Cuchillo, a male and two 
females were seen, December 22, 1915 (Ligon). On the Carlsbad Bird Reserve, 
in 1914, the species was noted in February (Wilder); it was abundant, January, 
1915; noted in the winter of 1915-1916; [500 were estimated December, 1916; also 
on the Rio Grande Bird Reserve (Elephant Butte), 400 were noted November 23- 
December 9, 1916, and they were said to breed near by (Willett); reported as some¬ 
times wintering in Colfax County (Charles Springer, 1925).] 
The spring migrants are most common in March—noted March 6; 150, seen 
March 13; about 600, March 23; 300, March 24 and 25; and 20, April 29 (Cooper);— 
although soon after early April most of them depart for their more northern breed¬ 
ing grounds.— W. W. Cooke. 
Nest. —On the ground, usually near water, hidden in grass, weeds, bushes, or 
dry reeds, made of leaves and grasses and thickly lined with dark gray down. 
tyffs: Usually 6 to 10, light greenish rather than bufly. 
Food. —“The Mallard is one of our most omnivorous ducks, and nothing in 
the way of mast, grain, or small animal life comes amiss ... it has the habit, 
shared to the same extent by no other duck, of resorting to the stubble for waste 
grain” (Henshaw). Among the articles of its varied diet are seeds, stems, leaves, 
rootstalks, and tubers of sedges, wild grasses, smartweeds, pondweeds, duckweeds, 
coon tail, wild rice, wild celery, musk grass, frog bit, eel-grass, wild millet, delta 
duck potato, water elm, and hackberry, seeds of wapato, also acorns; and in ani¬ 
mal food, aquatic insects, grasshoppers, dragon fly nymphs, beetles, snails, shellfish, 
and an occasional meadow mouse or frog. “Mallards are very destructive to the lar¬ 
vae of mosquitoes . . . clearing stagnant pools where mosquitoes breed ' (Forbush). 
General Habits. —The progenitor of our domestic duck, the large 
Mallard or Green-head “is well known over nearly the whole northern 
hemisphere/ 7 while the Mallard bred in domestication, as Mr. Forbush 
says, “forms an important part of the food supply of China, the most 
populous country on the globe”; the Pekin duck now being the staple 
stock of many a huge poultry plant in America. It is also “the chief 
water-fowl of most game preserves, on some of which 10,000 birds are 
reared annually.” It is the best species for wild-duck farming, an 
industry which, as Mr. McAtee says, “should be developed as extensively 
as possible in order to supplement the decreasing natural supply of 
game” (1918, p. 2). 
