Malus domestica - An apple a day should shove the mallard away.
Expecting a Canada goose baby boom locally next season so maybe I should singlehandedly bring their numbers closer to mallard on here! 
The trick is for one or two people to find a huge flock of birds (at least in the thousands), get a wide shot of the flock, then count each individual bird in the photo, and post the observation once for each bird in the photo. There are a few bird species this could work with, a species of goose (maybe Canada?) would probably work best. Alternatively, a colonial seabird could work.
One could but I don’t think they should. That amount of energy should serve other purposes both for the observers and the identifiers…and I know you were kind of kidding.
Kind of, although I’ve actually been thinking of the logistics. I think I could do it.
Yes, I compleltely agree. I think this is a fun thought experiment (hence the tag mostly-humor) and it’d be great to see another species on top, but Mallard being the most observed species isn’t really a problem - more of an interesting reflection of the community iNat reaches, taxa which are widespread, easily identifiable, and charismatic.
But don’t forget you have to write a description detailing which bird the observation is for! “This observation is for the starling that is 4039th from the left and 283rd from the bottom…”
This year I aim to observe at least one non-domesticated mallard. No luck last year!
Although I admit Mallard is a very common and widespread species, there is a definite difference between what I call “Town Mallards”, ie those that are resident for most of the year, and true, “Wild Mallards”. We see both types here in the Adirondacks of New York and the true wild Mallards are much more wary and skittish than the “town Mallards”. Oh, and for my sightings, the top in total numbers are 1) Costa’s Hummingbird 2)Ring-billed Gull 3)Monarch Butterfly and finally 4) Mallard. That #1 species is a result of a number of visits to Arizona :-)
It’s inteesting that I have only 1 observation of mallard, in my case the good ontender is black kite they are like second common after feral pigeon, I hope to give a crown to black kite(Black dragon)
Sadly I doubt any species not found in NA can beat one in NA, as you can see from year in review and other graphs, USA are the source of so many observations, their species will always be on top, black kite is a good species otherwise with really wide range and big numbers.
No worries Black dragon already has throne has in my heart, so it will be funny how you will dethrone real ruler
You can try to make it the first one on regional level!
Is there a similar distinction that people draw between migratory and non-migratory Canada geese?
I remember living in a neighborhood with sometimes very aggressive Canada geese (it was where I learnt NEVER to feed geese) and so a joke amongst some ecologist friends there was “Canada geese are protected by migratory bird laws, but what if they’re not migratory?”.
What’s wrong with mallards? Other than that they do weird things like this:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/95898691
Now that Mexican Duck is recognized as a full species, I’ll have to pay more attention to mallards in my area (where the two species hybridize) and will probably photo more.
It’s hard to respect drake mallards sometimes.
Mallards are interesting sometimes though, like this one, which seems to be intersex: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/102965494
Sonchus oleraceus? or Portulaca oleracea?
I was very close to suggest Euphorbia serpens, these things are everywhere, but I see why we shouldn’t haha
I like those.
Checked my list of observations and I find it amusing that not only is the Mallard only 15th, there are two other Anas species that I’ve observed/recorded more often than Anas platyrhynchos.