This is Duckdcuk, sitting on the roof ridge of a house behind me. He’s a mallard drake.

He hangs out on these roofs quite a lot. All the other ducks mess about in the water and muck of the watermeadow.

I don’t know if he is suffering from DBO (Duck body Odour) or some such that makes him an outcast, or just needs a little me time every now and then.

I can sympathise, the conversational level for most of his kind seems to boil down to “Quack, quack. Quack quack quack. Squawk!” Kind of limited, don’t you think?

Or maybe he’s just a loner with dreams of being a soaring eagle.

There are two things of interest:

Ducks are usually gregarious, flock people. It makes sense if you are the target of a load of predators. In a flock, there are many pairs of eyes on the lookout for danger. One can concentrate on feeding and messing about knowing that somebody will be watching the surroundings for danger. And if a predator does attack, there is a many to one chance that you will not be the prime target. If the whole flock scrambles, the predator may lose its target in the general scrum of take-off and be unable to acquire another target before all are safely airborne. To be alone is a bit dangerous, although being on a rooftop is a good vantage point. Plus, in this area, the apex airborne predator, the kite, is not big enough to take on an adult duck and not many foxes or cats will venture on to a roof ridge on the off chance of a duck sandwich.

Ducks have webbed feet. It’s a thing with them. It isn’t very easy to perch with such landing gear. They aren’t designed for gripping tree branches or even landing on a steeply sloping roof surface.

This indicates the high degree of accuracy that is needed to land on a  roof ridge. I don’t think he could land on the sloping roof surface and even then it would be difficult to walk up to the ridge.

So, big up to Duckduck. Aviator par excellence.