Mallard Duck

Mallard Ducks are background critters. As all other critters, they have 5 health, no defense, and are often killed instantly by enemies or the player. Their counterpart is the Duck.

Mallard Ducks can usually only spawn in the middle third of the above-ground world, or in areas near an NPC house if water is present. They only appear in pools of water, despite their size or if they are naturally generated. They quite frequently make a "quack" sound when nearby.

Mallard Ducks will passively wander the surface until they fall a certain distance or are submerged. At which point, they will switch to their alternate flying form, where they will fly in a given direction for a certain amount of time before landing and switching back to their passive form. Despite their spawn conditions, they do not prioritize water whenever landing.

Mallard Ducks, as their counterpart, can be caught using a Bug Net. They can be carried around in the inventory until placed (released), deleted, or crafted into a Mallard Duck Cage. Caged ducks can be used as furniture and cannot be released once crafted. They also move around inside the cage.

The Mallard Duck Cage occupies a 6×3 space. The Mallard Duck inside may follow the following patterns randomly:
 * Run from one side to the other of the cage
 * Briefly clean itself with its beak while on the right side
 * Sit down and stay in place

Trivia

 * When ducks quack, there is a 1/300 chance the sound will be a very obvious human voice saying the word . It was pulled from a royalty-free site, because the Re-Logic team found it amusing. The sound was included purposefully as an "Easter egg".
 * They are related to the normal Duck in a very similar way Bunnies relate to Squirrels, as they both spawn in the center third of the map or near NPC houses, they both have an alternate version, and being critters, they all share stats.
 * Due to a potential oversight, whenever a duck "transforms" into its flying variant, it is considered a new entity and will no longer be considered a critter, causing it to occupy spawn slots as normal, preventing hostiles from spawning. Furthermore, due to their flying variant being considered a different entity altogether, statues ignore their existence when calculating the limit of concurrent entities existing in the world at once. This can be exploited by placing statues submerged, or using a water pump to cause ducks to instantly switch to their flying form, enabling endless spawning and potentially hitting the physical entity cap.
 * This bug is already fixed in the 1.4.0.1 update.

History
Canard colvert