Can Ducks Fly?

Yes. Nearly every wild duck flies, and flies well — Cornell estimates migrating mallards at 55 miles per hour. The exceptions are three species of steamer duck at the bottom of South America, and most of the domestic breeds, which were bred heavy for meat and eggs and can no longer get off the ground. Even the best flier is grounded for a few weeks every summer, when it drops all its flight feathers at once.

Wild ducks: all but three

The only wild ducks that cannot fly are steamer ducks. Britannica describes them as “any of four species of heavily built, big-billed sea ducks” of southernmost South America and the Falkland Islands, named for their “habit of running across the water with wings thrashing like a paddle-wheel steamboat”; three of the four are flightless. Falklands Conservation says of the Falkland steamer duck that “An adult drake may weigh around 3½ kg and measure 80cms from the tip of his bill to the end of his tail” — a heavy bird with, in Cornell’s eBird description, “shorter, stunted wings and tail and thicker neck and bill.” Every other wild duck, from teal to eider, flies, and many of them migrate thousands of miles; how far and how fast is in duck migration and how fast can ducks fly.

Domestic ducks: mostly not

Domestic ducks descend from the mallard, but centuries of breeding for weight changed the sums. The Open Sanctuary Project: “most domesticated duck breeds have have [sic] lost their ability to fly. Their feathers are typically not long enough for flight and their muscles aren’t designed for it either; and some breeds are far too heavy for flight.” The University of Kentucky’s extension guide says the Rouen is “popular for decorating ponds since they are colored like the wild Mallard but are too heavy to fly away”, and that “Runner ducks cannot fly and rarely form nests.” Metzer Farms, a California hatchery, puts it simply: “Except for the Mallard, none of our ducks inherently know how to fly.” The same post carries an account from two brothers, Joel and Jacob, who taught their own ducks by launching them into a strong headwind: their Runners, Khaki Campbells and Buff Orpingtons learned, one Khaki hen “flew really high above our trees”, but of the Pekin, one of the heaviest common breeds, they wrote “I don’t think a Pekin could fly, but you never know.”

The domestic ducks that do fly are the light ones and the Muscovy. Metzer’s plain statement is that “The only ducks we have that fly easily are the Mallards” — meaning domestic mallards, sold as pets and for ponds. The poultry supplier Omlet lists “Muscovies, Calls, East Indies and domesticated Mallards” as the breeds that “can all fly to some extent” — the Call duck being the smallest of the mallard breeds, and the Muscovy a different species altogether, one that in the wild, Cornell says, will “roost high in trees at night, often in groups.” The breeds are compared in duck breeds: a beginner’s guide, with pages on the Pekin, the Call duck and the Muscovy.

How a duck gets airborne

Watch a mallard leave a pond and it seems to jump into the air; watch a canvasback and it runs. Ducks Unlimited explains the difference through the wings: “Because a puddle duck’s wings are typically large in relation to body size and have a lower aspect ratio, most puddlers can spring into flight and make sharp turns”, whereas “divers have to run across the water to take off and must flap their wings more rapidly to achieve flight.” Leg position matters too — the Iowa Department of Natural Resources notes that diving ducks’ legs are “situated further back”, which “prevents divers from launching or springing smoothly into flight like a dabbling duck, so they get a running start across the surface of the water like a goose.” The bufflehead is the diver that breaks the rule: the Fish and Wildlife Service says “Unlike most divers, they can fly straight up from a watery takeoff.” More on the two groups in dabbling vs diving ducks.

When ducklings first fly

Ducklings walk and swim within a day of hatching, but they cannot fly for the better part of two months. Audubon gives the mallard’s age at first flight as 52 to 60 days; Ducks Unlimited says “The female stays with the ducklings for about 45 to 60 days, at which time the ducklings are able to fly”, and describes broods at seven to eight weeks as “capable of making short flights around the marsh.” Everything before that is in ducklings.

The month every duck is grounded

Ducks moult their flight feathers all at once, not one at a time. Cornell: “Mallards, like other ducks, shed all their flight feathers at the end of the breeding season and are flightless for 3–4 weeks.” Ducks Unlimited’s estimate is longer — mallards “replace all their flight feathers, making them flightless for 30–45 days” — and the two figures overlap rather than conflict. The ducks know their weakness: they “often fly long distances after breeding to traditional ‘molting wetlands,’ which sometimes can support tens of thousands of flightless ducks during late summer.” If a wild duck on your pond in July seems unable to fly, it is almost certainly moulting, not injured.

Wing clipping, and what it is not

Keepers of flying breeds sometimes clip a wing. Metzer’s advice is to “Clip only one wing. This keeps them off balance when they try to fly”, to “Leave 3-4 of the large flight feathers at the tip of the wing”, and to wait until ducks “are at least 15 weeks of age” so the adult feathers are in. Clipping cuts dead feather and, in John Metzer’s reply to a reader, “It hurts them to have their feathers clipped as much as it hurts you to have your hair cut”; it also grows out, so “Feather clipping needs to be done annually.” Pinioning is a different thing: a permanent procedure carried out on very young birds that, in the wording of Florida’s wildlife commission, renders them “permanently incapable of flight”. A fenced run with a top, or simply choosing a breed that does not fly, avoids both.

Do not let them go

The reverse question — can I release a duck that can fly? — has a clear answer in the United States. Wild mallards, the Fish and Wildlife Service says, “are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. It is illegal for any person to take, possess, transport, sell, or purchase them or their parts, such as feathers, nests, or eggs, without a permit”, and federal rules prohibit releasing captive-reared Muscovies as well. Domestic ducks released on a park pond do badly: the Open Sanctuary Project warns that “they face malnutrition and starvation” and that handouts “can quickly deteriorate their health.” A duck that cannot fly cannot leave a frozen pond or fly from a fox; keeping one is a commitment, and buying your first ducks covers what that involves. To see the flyways from the duck’s side, play Flyway.