Guandu Metro Station - The Mallard Wearing a Gas Mask | Guandu Metro Station “Carnival of the Animals” × Fuxinggang Metro Station “Big Contributions from Small Soldiers”

The Mallard Wearing a Gas Mask

Brother Hao has needed to consume copious amounts of medicine since youth. It took his parents a great deal of effort to raise this dying little fledgling and turn him into a charming drake. Consequently, Brother Hao closely watches his diet and chooses organic and pesticide-free foods as much as possible. He avoids dangerous places so that his aging parents won’t worry. But recently he suffered several fits of dry coughing and can’t figure out why. He wonders if it has anything to do with the PM 2.5 levels that have been much discussed recently.

Mallard

The mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) is a dabbling bird of the Anatidae family. The domestic duck is a species improved and domesticated from the mallard.

Features

The mallard is about 60 centimeters long. The bill of the breeding male is yellow. It has a metallic luster green head and a white collar at the bottom of its neck, as well as two pairs of central curled tail feathers, which are unmistakable. The female mallard, which is yellow-brown with mottled darker brown stripes, shares the black eye stripes and has an orange bill tipped with black. Its speculum is blue.
Habitat

The mallard inhabits wetlands with open and slowly flowing freshwater, brackish water, or saltwater. It usually forages in shallow water areas.
Distribution

The mallard is widely distributed around the whole of the Northern Hemisphere. It breeds in frigid zones of high latitude and in winter migrates to subtropical areas around the Tropic of Cancer.
Habits

During breeding season, they hang out in family units. Outside of breeding season, they flock together. There are numerous colonies of mallards in Europe and America, and they live very close to humans. In Europe and North America, mallards tend to linger and accept people feeding them in park ponds or private gardens. In Taiwan, there are few wild mallards, and they keep their distance from humans. In both the wild and at the park, domesticated or released mallards can be seen. They are distinctive from the wild flocks in plumage, and most are not migratory. Mallards build nests in bushes on the ground and decorate them with plumage and down feathers. There are usually 9-13 eggs in one clutch. Incubation takes 27-28 days, and it takes one year for juvenile ducklings to sexually mature.
Diet

The mallard is omnivorous. Its diet is made up of macrophytic algae, aquatic plants, and aquatic benthic organisms, such as fish, crustaceans, gastropods and invertebrates.

Extended Reading

The sky here today is grey. How about over there, Mallard?

People produce lots of exhaust fumes and wastewater that contaminate the environment. The resulting greenhouse effect causes global warming. Air pollution leads to acid rain while wastewater that is not properly treated contaminates our water sources. These pollutants destroy the species around us.

The carbon black in air pollution consists of particles that are emitted by petrol and diesel engines and coal-burning power plants. These particles absorb sunlight and prevent it from being reflected back into the atmosphere.

Water and air pollution have had an enormous impact on migrant birds. Birds are relatively small animals and thus have much less resistance to pollution than other species. They are more apt to die due to pollution.

Besides directly killing migrant birds, poisoning caused by air pollution can interfere with birds’ natural migrating ability. Researchers believe that birds migrating during the day use the sun and the landscape to navigate, while birds migrating during the night get their orientation from the moon and the stars. Normally, adult birds fly below 900 meters high, while juvenile birds fly at around 100 meters high. Severe air pollution decreases air visibility, much like scratched goggles would affect visibility when swimming. This diminishes the birds’ navigation skills, which are dependent on seeing their surroundings and the nighttime sky.

After reading all of this, do you feel inspired to buy a gas mask for these birds? If you’re not able to find any, you could start by making simple changes to your daily life by lowering your carbon emissions.

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