When I am looking for a specific photo, I often have to scroll back through gazillions of photos in my iPhoto library to find it, for I haven’t labeled many of my pictures. And when I am scrolling, I’m stuck by the number of duck pictures I have. But that makes me both happy and sad: I remember the good times but I’m sad that we won’t have ducks and ducklings this summer.
I don’t even know if they’ll let us have ramps to let any ducklings leave the water. Here’s a photo from two years ago or so showing a brood of ducklings that decided to nap on the ramp. How can you be glum looking at this?
Click the photo to enlarge it. Note the closed nictitating membranes of the sleeping babies:
Defines the word, “zonked”.
Jerry,
I oftentimes share with my wife the content of many of your posts. She politely listens, sometimes engages, and frequently asks: How are the ducks? Any updates? Are they back yet? She may quit listening to me if I tell her there will be no ducks this summer!
Just email me your email address and I’ll send your wife some duck pictures to entertain her.
So cute!
This is a lovely photo!
I’m having a Cute-a-betes attack!
A wonderful photo – thanks!
At least one un-nictated eye in that … gaggle?
Which is, of course, a large part of the point of sleeping with conspecifics – the odds of someone having one eye open and spotting a predator are considerably better than for sleeping alone.
The four here with heads more-or less erect seem to be crudely aligned bill-to tail, so relatively few eyelines are obscured by the neighbour’s head (which is reciprocal, of course). Is that a more-common-than-random thing for ground-dwelling broods?
Came here whilst testing my WordPress settings, delightful!