Duck fight!

Hello all. With the arrival of spring and the breeding season for a lot of birds there have been some great behaviours on show as (generally) the males of the species get a bit feisty with one another (and with the females) in a pheremone-fuelled frenzy. I posted a thread of some Moorhens tussling a little while back, This time it is the turn of a couple of Mallards. These guys are pretty violent with one another and especially with the female ducks, and I watched a couple of males having a solid fight at the Wetland Centre in Barnes last week. Here is a flavour:
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I fired off a load of shots of these ducks fighting and there are more on flickr if anyone wants to see more. The Wetland Centre is a great place. They have a lot of wild space with hides and viewing areas, as well as a small collection of 'captive' ducks (mainly for conservation I think) and this series was taken in one of those enclosures; but the Mallards are wild - they obviously realise that the enclosures are an easy place to get fed I guess.

Hope you like them. Any C&C welcome as ever. These were all taken with the K-7 fitted with Sigma 100-300 f4.

Regards

Very well captured.... it's hard enough when they are sitting still
I've never actually seen Mallards fighting like that I've seen them having small pulls at each others feathers especially when it involves a female. Maybe it varies with the exact Mallard variety.

Very good captures. Sharp an well exposed.
I hope the red reflections in no.4 is not blood, but just part of their red feet.

Very nicely captured !

I like #6 the best.

The best seems to be the last one, great action shot with the composition of the wing and head of the one on the left

I have never seen ducks behave like this either, perhaps the ones we have locally are just too chilled out

Well caught.

We have the geese and swans fighting on the riverbank but I've never managed to have my camera ready at the time.

Thanks all. I have seen a few skirmishes between ducks (and geese) but this was the most prolonged and violent I have seen until now, especially without a female duck being directly involved (I have seen a pack of male Mallards go pretty much insane piling onto a female). There was no blood, I think the loser mostly suffered from a bruised ego and the odd lost feather.

Regards