Mallards and Canadas are the Draw

     Flocks of mallard ducks and Canada geese spend successive winters on certain human-made ponds of about a half-acre to one or two acres in size, even ones with people use on them.  Those adaptable ducks and geese draw other kinds of attractive and interesting ducks and geese to those ponds during autumn, winter and early spring in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, as elsewhere.  Not being constructed particularly for wildlife, those built impoundments have little shelter around them, but the presence of mallards and Canadas on those ponds must indicate to the stray ducks and geese that those built impoundments are safe to rest and feed on.  And so they do, mostly as individuals.
     For years I have visited some of those local ponds to see what kinds of waterfowl have been drawn to them, including in early November of 2014.  Within a few days at that time, I saw a young male shoveler duck and a drake green-winged teal among a couple hundred mallards on one two-acre pond and a young male wigeon and an immature drake black duck with about 180 mallards on another, half-acre impoundment.  Why were they all male?  I don't know.  And why were most of them adolescents?  I don't know.  But it was interesting to see those beautiful ducks on the impoundments.  And they prompted this article because I remember seeing stray individuals of other types of ducks and geese on private ponds in this county in November through to March over the years because of the omnipresent mallards and Canada geese that are also around them.
     Some of the ducks I have seen on ponds through the years, other than those on impoundments on wildlife preserves, include pintails, gadwalls, wood ducks, hooded mergansers, ruddy ducks, buffleheads, ring-necked ducks, canvasbacks and a kind of scaup.  All these birds were migrants or over-wintering when I saw them.  The mergansers caught fish in the ponds, while the ruddies, buffleheads, ring-necks, scaups and canvasbacks dove under water to consume aquatic vegetation and invertebrates.  Only the woodies stay here to nest in woodlands, and woodlots in farmland.
     I also think the few American coots and pied-billed grebes that are on these ponds in winter and during migrations are also drawn down by mallards and Canadas.  The coots mostly eat vegetation
while the grebes are fish catchers.
     In winter over the years, Canada geese have brought down a few individuals each of tundra swans, cackling geese, brant, snow geese and white-fronted geese to small, human-made impoundments outside of wildlife refuges.  Those larger waterfowl rest with the Canadas on ponds, and feed with them on waste corn and rye shoots in local fields.   
     I don't know why these individual ducks and geese get separated from their own flocks.  But when they do, they join groups of their relatives for safety.  There is safety in numbers.  Watch for these stray ducks, geese and swans on small impoundments inland in winter.  They can make a winter day cheerier and more interesting.