There are still eight ducklings in the pond, and this morning only a single mallard drake appeared: the gluttonous Frank, whose girth bespeaks his consumption of corn.
I found Honey and her brood on the grass this morning, and was quite happy, for that gave me a chance to toss her a lot of corn to wolf down (it’s easier to do that then toss single kernels into the water for her to dabble). But as soon as I started feeding her, Tubby Frank appeared, chased the brood into the water, and then nommed all the corn. Honey does look too slim for me, and I hope that later today, with Anna’s help, we can separate the pair and give Mom a good feed.
In the meantime, she did get corn in the water, as well as mealworms; and the babes got all that and Cheerio fragments, too. Here they are on land (you can count all eight; one is peeking out from behind Honey):
The ducklings do seem to learn from Honey. For example, after I fed them all she went to the lily pads and began turning them over with her bill, obviously foraging. Within seconds all the ducklings were on top of the lily pads, also foraging (they’re too small to turn over a pad with their tiny bills):
After a meal, Honey invariably repairs to near the tree island and dunks herself rapidly into the water, then flapping her wings and repeating the porpoise-like dunking. I don’t know why she does this, but some of the ducklings imitate her. Here they watch her ablutions, which some of them imitated (you can see one dunking itself at upper left). They mother and brood then climbed onto the tree island and engaged in a long bout of preening.
QUOTE OF THE DAY: “… the gluttonous Frank, whose girth bespeaks his consumption of corn.” 😹
Doesn’t Frank know there are ducks starving in China? Or worse.
I too was particularly tickled by this sentence. Almost sounds like our host lifted it from a none too complementary London ‘society’ article circa 1850!
Wow, girth-shaming drakes now, are we?
We should expect a flurry of emails and opinion pieces from the DJWs or would they be SJDs.
Fluffy rays of sunshine.
If one wants to be fancy, Frank’s what you’d call a gourmand, which I always understood as another way to say glutton; but these days it’s become synonomous with gourmet and foodie.
I love the little ones that are couched on the lily pads, each one to a pad
In a previous post on another subject, I suggested two collective nouns for ducklings specifically: A dabbling or dabbing of ducklings. Dabbling in the primary sense of the verb to dab: “immerse (one’s hands or feet) partially in water and move them around gently.”
Just don’t call him an epicure. That’s a slander on Epicurus.
Hey man, you don’t know Frank’s philosophy!
I don’t think Frank eats just bread and occasionally a pot of cheese so that he “can have a feast”. 😉 (This is, BTW, the only thing I can remember Epicurus mentioning food-wise.)
As for whether he’s an non-religious atomist sophisticated hedonist etc., I dunno … maybe the latter 🙂
I suggest the duck fully submerges to make preening [on land] immediately afterwards easier – the feather ‘underlayer’ is very fine & probably easier to align while heavier with water droplets.
Here is a very conscientious duck’s preening routine. Amusing – you will see why on watching:
Now THAT is a well groomed duck! It’s especially cute when they lift up their feet.
I wish Honey were that fat! 🙁
Those, in transit, starter duck pellets had better do the job!
Her brood seems to “eat her alive”!
Enjoying the regular duck updates.
I think we all have relatives like Frank. We can feel your pain Honey and little Honetts.