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Originally Posted by Squirrels  Hi,
I occasionally see a mallard with a large lump on its cheek and would like to know what causes these lumps. The ducks in question have mostly been at our local park (North Walls, Winchester, Hampshire) and the affected cheek can be either the right one or the left one. The affected bird can be either male or female - we've only seen the condition in adult birds. There's never more than one facial lump on each bird. At the moment I'm keeping an eye on a male mallard, beautiful in his breeding plumage but looking rather sorry for himself because he has one of these lumps on his right cheek. Like other ducks with this condition, he appears to be able to see out of the eye on the affected side of the face but is obviously much slower at reaching food.
Ducks with disabilities tend to be picked on by their fellow flock mates so I always try and feed ill or injured ducks as much as possible!
I think the facial lumps could be caused by cancer or they could be an abscess which has been caused by a fish hook getting stuck in the bird's cheek and causing an infection. I really would like some expert opinion, though! If I ever manage to photograph a duck with a facial lump I'll post it here for you to see. |
My advice would be to get him rescued and treated - it may be an easily fixed problem - when I worked for a swan sanctuary we used to get quite a few ducks with eye infections - easily treated, look up wildlife rescue or wildlise sactuary in your yellow pages and give them a call - if it comes to bread it should be relatively easily caught.