Boys will be Boys 1/15/24
When I happened upon these Mallards this morning, I noticed they were a bit more animated than last week, especially the drakes. At first I thought maybe they were upset with the attention the ladies got last week and were angling to get their own post. But after watching them, most of the action was between two of them. One was following the other everywhere it went. The one being followed would start to speed up and dart different directions, but his stalker matched every move. Eventually he would fly to another area to get away. You can see some of that playing out in Photos 2&3. This behavior had the fortunate side effect of giving me several chances to get him in flight. Regardless of the reasons, they did in fact put on a display worthy of their own post.
Minor photographic side-note: if you’re wondering why the lighting seems to change around a bit, I was there for a while and the lighting did indeed change a fair bit throughout. The most noticeable is Photo 6 which was taken just as the sun was starting to peak over the hill. The effect is exacerbated by the fact that I did not put them in chronological order.
