[Not Quite Everything About Ducks (yet)]

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Ducks and especially mallards are, according to all my growing number of bird books, monogamous for life. But as the following photographs indicate, monogamy may not be all it's cracked up to be.

I have such good (?) photographs of this event, because much of it played out a few feet in front of us as we sat on a park bench in Sunset Bay, watching birds. We heard the squabble start a couple dozen feet off to our right as a woman walked near a gaggle of ducks up to no good.

The mob moved a dozen yards off to our left as it dawned on us what was going on. I'd told Anna that duck sex is sometimes more like gang rape than anything romantic. I've photographed brief snippets of that sort of action a couple of times previously.

We were talking about that when the mob of mallards moved about 8 feet in front of our perch and continued as if no humans were around. These guys clearly have acclimated themselves to humans wandering through their lives, even taking pictures.

When the first few shots were blurry (In the descending dark of evening, I can see the camera's LCD pretty clearly, when I had a few seconds to reconnoiter my earlier results.) I upped the ISO to the figures past 1600, even added flash when I thought that might help. As shown in this shot.

All of these males chased that one spotted female. When they'd catch her, several males would hold her head down with their bills while they took turns mounting her. When one would finish, he'd fall to the side, sometimes with his feet in the air as if completely winded, still for a few seconds, then jump up as if nothing had happened. Meanwhile, another male would mount the defeated female.

Sometimes she'd escape briefly with the gang of them waddling along right behind and all around her. While one did his thing, the other males walked around in random patterns, nearly oblivious. I waited for several to get out of the way of the camera.

Their technique barely varied. Each new male would climb on top from behind, enfold her with his wings and push her down from the back from the back of her head. At least this lady duck was on land. I've seen them nearly drowned a hapless female they finally caught off shore.

Yeah, this is the result, although the lady above was hanging out around the lake with a bright White Domestic (I don't know what else to call them. They're everywhere but in my bird books. How can that be? Utterly ubiquitous at the lake ...)

I don't know my ducks very well yet. But I'm learning.