The female may need your help in leading her ducklings safely across roads to water. Ducks shed all their flight-feathers at once and become flightless. After the breeding season, males moult back into their brilliant colouring. Mallards eat a wide range of food, watch them grazing on lawns, eating acorns and hunting for water-snails, caddis fly larvae, frogs or fish in shallow water. Duckings feed mainly on insects.
Mallards take bread and grain in parks and gardens.
There is a variety of quacks made. The female emits a harsh series of quacks, whereas the male has quieter, nasal quacks. The nest of leaves and grasses is placed under dense vegetation, sometimes in a tree. The female, who rears the family by herself, covers the nest with down when she leaves to feed. The eggs hatch together and the ducklings depart the nest before they are a day old.