[mou] Black Dog Odd Duck

[SUSAN HULT]

  I've heard from a very credible source that while driving, she came up on 
a female mallard picking at a deer carcass on the side of the road.  
Mallards are great ducks, aren't they?


>From: Roberta.Gitchel@co.hennepin.mn.us
>To: mou-net@cbs.umn.edu
>Subject: [mou] Black Dog Odd Duck
>Date: Fri, 2 Jan 2004 07:27:58 -0600
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>Black Dog Road, Dakota Co., 1/1/2004 --
>
>Well, O.K., a MALLARD is hardly an "odd duck."  However I think I saw a
>mallard hen engaging in rather odd behavior.  Sighted a mallard pair
>swimming in the open water below the dam on the east end of Black Dog Road
>near Hwy 77.  Noted the hen paddled quickly to shore, hauled herself up on
>the bank, and immediately and most ferociously began chewing on the carcass
>of what appeared to be a freshly killed drake mallard.  This hen was most
>aggressive in her feasting, shaking the carcass this way and that to rip
>off shreds of still-bloody meat.  Her mate would have none of it....the
>drake (the live one, that is) paddled off-shore at a discreet distance and
>showed no inclination whatsoever to participate in the cannibalistic New
>Year feast.  I had assumed mallards are strictly vegetarian.  I guess not.
>
>Mallard was likely laid low by hungry EAGLES, a pair of which were fishing
>the upstream side of the dam.   Also paddling about on the upstream side of
>the dam were 10 - 12 HOODED MERGANSERS.
>
>Large group of COMMON MERGANSERS noted swimming near the far south shore of
>the east end of Black Dog Lake.  A small number of CANADIAN GEESE also in
>the same vicinity.
>
>The west end of Black Dog Road, near Hwy 35W, offered a flock of about 30
>PURPLE FINCHES gleaning seeds in the trees adjacent to the river path.
>EAGLES -- juvenile and adult -- noted on the west end of Black Dog as well
>as the east.
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