When I was a student at college in Ashland in my undergrad years
(1959-1963) I would often drive to the upper pond in Lithia park and watch
the ducks--mostly mallards--along with reading my assignments between class
sessions.
I often saw mallards dive fully under the shallow water and swim around as
fast as possible after the colorful fish that then were common in the
pond--and swallowing any they caught. Pairs of mallards were often seen
walking around the pond area in spring. The males trailed resignedly along
after the females searching for the exactly right nesting spot.
I can't recall now if only hens fished or drakes as well. I wasn't even a
birder then, but it is a perfectly clear memory, and one I have never seen
elsewhere.
Sally Nelson; birding since 1970 ~2 miles west of Creswell, OR
On Sat, Sep 4, 2021 at 1:55 PM Dan Gleason <dan-gleason@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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:
saw several female or immature Mallards diving fully underwater, instead of
This morning at the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden in Portland I
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.
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