The bill is gone

August 28, 2017 • 3:00 pm

. . . maybe. My mallard Honey was acting weird yesterday, being very skittish and not eating all her food before paddling back to her duck island. Today she hasn’t been around for breakfast, lunch, or tea. Maybe she’s just messing with me, but maybe she’s gone for good. If she is, well, that means she can fly, and I’m happy about that. But I’ll miss her.

Here she is with her ducklings (3 drakes and a hen) on May 28 and then on June 31. They all grew up healthy and flew away. She was a great mother.

They grow fast, don’t they? Honey’s in the rear.

Maybe she’ll come back tomorrow.

18 thoughts on “The bill is gone”

  1. If Honey is going to migrate it could happen anytime from the end of August to the end of November. Mallards they say, tend to go later. Early migrators are the Teal and that is why they sometimes have an earlier season on ducks like teal. I know you do not want to hear any of this….

  2. Jerry, either she is going to bail and fly away from you or you’ll do the dirty on her and fly off to Poland, leaving her nomless. Either way, this is a doomed relationship.

  4. Umm, okay…I’m mixed up here. I thought Honey was the duckling who was being run off by her brothers when it was feeding time at the zoo. I thought you kept her healthy by feeding her so that her brothers couldn’t take her food.

    Now it sounds as if Honey is their mother. So what happened to the duckling who was being bullied? What did I miss?

      1. For a while I thought the remaining duck was the female hatchling, but when I discovered that the adults molt and chicks don’t, I realized that she was the mom. It was only after that that she got her name “Honey.”

        She’s the MOM.

  5. Been a while since I went through a really bad break-up. There’s no cure, as I recall, but Sinatra tunes and a bottle of good sour mash can help ease the pain.

    Here, I’ll get you started with the Sinatra (you’ll excuse the bad toup):

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