It’a nor a frequent behavior but Mallards do sometimes dive completely
underwater. I’ve seen this only a few times and it is usually not a repeated
behavior. Often it is a way to escape an unwanted situation such as a female
trying to avoid an overly aggressive male. They are known to sometimes submerge
to get food just out of reach by dabbling. It would be unusual for multiple
birds to be doing this at the same time and unusual to do this more than once
or twice.
Dan Gleason
Owner, Wild Birds Unlimited of Eugene
Ornithology Instructor, retired, University of Oregon
dan-gleason@xxxxxxxxxxx
(Please forgive my typos. I beat leukemia but the intense chemo was very, very
hard on my eyes.)
On Sep 4, 2021, at 1:29 PM, Ren Elias Britton <reneliasbritton@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
This morning at the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden in Portland I saw
several female or immature Mallards diving fully underwater, instead of just
dabbling. I haven't seen this behavior before (actually, I didn't know they
could swim underwater) and was curious how many other people had seen this
happen? I'm reasonably confident that I correctly identified the birds; it's
possible that they weren't Mallards, but I don't think they were a species of
diving duck.
