Pets can sometimes leave us out of the blue, this can happen with dogs, cats, and ducks too
If your mallard duck suddenly flew away you’d be right to be upset, this article explores why this happened and how to avoid it happening next time
Table of Contents
My mallard duck flew away:
Some ducks can fly away and will fly away if they feel the need to. There are many birds that can fly, but only a handful of ducks are able to fly. The ducks that can fly include domesticated mallards, runner ducks, call ducks, and muscovy ducks.
Some ducks can’t fly because of their high body weight but the mallard’s wings can support its body weight allowing them to fly and fly quite well.
Here is what you need to know if your bird flew away:
Why the duck flew away:
Your ducks may enjoy being home very much but may fly away regardless. The bird may fly away accidentally or intentionally and simply may not know how to get back home.
So, as much as the birds enjoy being on your property and living with you the birds can still fly away
Other reasons why these birds may get up and fly away may be because they are trying to escape a predator but they get lost along the way, because they are looking to find other food sources if they aren’t being properly fed at home, or, because it is in their instinct to fly off because they can.
These birds can not only fly but they are very fast and agile when flying, they can take off and fly as high as 500 to 4000 feet, if they can fly this high they are likely to get lost and fly off accidentally,
Will the bird come back?
Domestic ducks will frequently fly away and never come back so waiting for the bird to make its way home may have you waiting forever.
These birds flying away is quite common and if you ask around you may realize that more duck owners than you think have had birds that flew away.
In addition, the bird may want to come back but because it was raised to be a domesticated duck the bird may soon realize that it can’t make its way back home because it doesn’t know how to.
Because it can’t find food the bird may starve out in the wild or the bird may be attacked by a predator and be killed.
If the duck does try to fly away and comes back then you should count yourself lucky as the bird likely realized that life outside was hard and the bird could also find its way back
How to keep mallard ducks from flying away:
One solution that will keep your birds from flying away is clipping the bird’s wings, this is not a painful process for the ducks but it will keep these birds from being able to fly away.
Clipping the bird’s wings ensures that the bird can’t get any lift when trying to fly up from the ground. Doing this still enables the bird to fly down and land safely when they jump off of a high height.
Clipping entails cutting the bird’s flight wings, doing this is like cutting hair or fingernails on a person, in both cases, keratin is being cut off not any tissue or skin on the bird.
Thus, clipping will not be painful or uncomfortable to the bird and you’ll see from the bird’s reactions when you clip their wings that they are not in pain, the bird maybe uncomfortable when handled but the bird will not be in pain.
When doing this make sure that you don’t cut the bird’s blood feathers as the bird will start bleeding and even bleed out and die.
Clipping is a quick and easy process but because the birds will still grow a new set of feathers every year after a molt you’ll have to re-clip the bird’s feathers.
Note: Although this will keep the birds from flying, keeping the birds from flying may be controversial in itself.
Wing clipping is considered unnatural and cruel because these birds have a natural urge to fly and clipping stops them from being able to do this, but, if you want these birds to keep from flying away then you may want to clip the bird’s wings.
Another way to keep these birds from flying away is to attach something heavy, like a metal washer, to the bird’s wing permanently to keep the bird from flying.
A bird with something attached to one wing won’t be able to balance well enough to fly off in the first place.
If you enjoyed this article then you may also be interested in other duck related articles. Here are some articles that you may be interested in: How To Get Rid Of Duck Poop Smell, My Mallard Duck Flew Away Will It Come Back?, Do Ducks Get Jealous?, Do Ducks Remember Humans?, Will Soft Duck Eggs Hatch?