Every duck needs a home.

Nidderdale Moorland Group

Probably our most easily recognised specie of duck found in many different habitats from lakes, ponds, and reservoirs to slow flowing rivers where they can find shallow margins for feeding, the Mallard is a large, heavy dabbling duck and the male in particular is easily recognised with his dark green head, white neck ring and broad yellow bill. The breast is a dark purple-brown and the body mainly grey with a distinctive curly black tail feathers.

Females are mainly a mottled brown in colour.

Mallards are also early breeders and, with many now already paired up and at their chosen nest sites, it was the perfect time to join Rob Newton, our BASC Regional Officer, who kindly supplied several of our sporting estates in Nidderdale with specialised duck nest tubes last week and spent the day visiting our upland and low ground ponds to install the first nine nest tubes with our gamekeepers.

Female Mallards build shallow nests in vegetation, or sometimes holes in trees, using grasses and leaves before lining the nest with feathers plucked from the breast.

She will then lay up to 12 eggs at 1-2 day intervals and with a full clutch weighing more than half her body weight.

Many nest sites are also in areas vulnerable to predation, trampling, flooding or disturbance and, once the clutch is complete the male will leave to rejoin other males whilst the female incubates and rears the ducklings on her own.

This is a very stressful time for female Mallard's with the success rate from ground nests as low as 15%.

By erecting the duck nest tubes in our ponds, elevated over water, they can offer the ducks more nest site security from the weather, predators and disturbance and this has been found to boost hatching success by up to 90%.

Nest tubes are built from wire and lined with hay ready for occupation , and by placing them in areas already in use by Mallards we know the habitat can successfully support any newly hatched ducklings.

For more information please go to www.basc.org.uk/duck-nest-tubes-for-mallard

We are looking forward to monitoring these new nests this spring and hopefully helping the local wild Mallards increase their breeding success rates in the dale.