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From the fish camera microphone, splashing and splattering was heard for several days without anyone seeing the originators of it. Now they arrived – and could that be - mallards?! Unbelievable that mallards would turn out to be raiders of trout spawning nests. If we had not seen this unique video documentation we would not have believed it.

 

Until now we have known that the food of mallards consists of aquatic plants in the water and insect larvae, molluscs, crustaceans and other invertebrates from the bottom. In the video we see that like the wader, the phalarope, mallards use their feet to trample out scraps for eating that have crept into hiding in the bottom mud and sand and gravel. The question is if the sieving-out and gobbling of trout roe has only been learnt by the clever mallards of Põlula and purposefully used by them, or is it a more widespread practice among mallards?

 

When the city mallards sleep at nine in the evening on the banks of the Schnell’s pond in the street lights of Tallinn, heads tucked under wings, the Põlula pirates operate in the dark.

 

In the Keila river at Keila-Joa I have always seen mallards busy at the salmon and trout spawning grounds but I have never thought of connecting them with eating roe. Actually we don’t know yet either what the Keila-Joa mallards are doing there and what or whom they are searching for to eat.

 

The thing needs following up. Around Tartu however the mallards gobble frogs.

 

What do we know at all about the malefactors-mallards? – maybe just this, that in difficult times ham and eggs and our daily bread will do too for them.