There are many ducks that overwinter in Ottawa - mallards, black ducks, goldeneyes plus others such as merganser and the occasional pintail. Some of the best spots to find the ducks are in the Ottawa River next to Mud Lake, and three spots on the Rideau River.
Various Mud Lake Photostories have featured the mallards and goldeneyes (plus others). Recent examples are found in Mud Lake December 2024 PhotoStories. Mallards in all, goldeneyes in first two, merganser in Christmas Day.
At the end of December, on a balmy 5°C day, we visited three spots on the Rideau, hoping for more than mallards and black ducks. Two spots provided a little variety, while a third had a bit more action.
Strathcona Park features a foot bridge over the Rideau which gives an overlooking vantage point to watch the ducks. A frequent visitor here are one or two barrow's goldeneye. They are not rare, but not frequently seen. We found lots of mallards, a few blacks and a long way upstream in the fog, a group of goldeneyes diving for food. Whether there was a barrow's with them or not, I couldn't tell as they were so far away. Scroll over for ID.
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There are usually a few pigeons at Strathcona Park along with the ducks, frequently some different coloured ones. Sure enough there were some pigeons, one or two whitish ones if you look hard, up on lamp posts and the reflective globes.
Working our way upstream, the next spot for ducks is Billings Bridge. A few black ducks were mixed in with the mallards. Most were on the ice on the north side of river. A few were flying about. None seemed interested in the sliced carrots someone dropped off for them.
But suddenly there was a large movement across to the other side of the river, someone was dropping off food that did interest them! The ice floe was left empty.
The third and last spot visited was in Manotick, a hundred yards or so north of Watson's Mills.
A visit here in 2005 on a -35°C freezing day provided lots of ducks
But this visit provided perhaps twenty mallards and no ice. However the sun came out while we were there and the male mallards' heads glowed
After 10 minutes or so, they seemed to spot us up on the bridge and decided to swim over and see if we would drop any food to them. (We didn't have anything for them)
A few mallard flew up from an area to the northwest and circled around to land in the river
A muskrat was swimming about
Not sure what killed the duck, (a bad traverse of the falls at Watson's Mills perhaps), but a dead mallard floated by.
