Sunday duck report

It’s time for another duck report, though I’ve been very tardy. The ducklings have grown a lot since the photos I show here, but the penultimate photo tells you what they looked like yesterday.

First, here’s lazy Mordecai, who is loath to fly. When he encounters stairs (this is before the ducklings hatched), he hops up them rather than flies:

The brood in the pond. They were still small when these pictures were taken, at about a week old (they’re now 19 days old).

Here’s Esther and her brood when they were two days old. Note that there are seven ducklings. We lost one to unknown causes :-(, but the rest are alive and healthy.

Mom and brood sunning on a stone:

Nap time!

One week old:

The babies love to climb on stones, and fortunately the pond is furnished with lots of them. They do this to dry off and also to warm up. Esther, always attentive, is right beside them. She’s turned out to be a great mother despite her hamhanded building of a nest on the ground.

Mordecai, whom I haven’t seen in 3.5 days, would stand guard while Esther was with the brood. They were small enough at a week old that she could sit on them all, but now they’re too big (see below):

A goose-stepping one-week-old duckling:

They like to swim in the discarded plastic pots previously (and unsuccessfully) used to grow plants. The pots have been left in the pond.

The Lab School teachers (a K-12 University of Chicago-affiliated school) know that the ducklings are here, and I’ve been asked to show them the ducks and answer their questions twice. I did it first with the kindergarten students, and below I’m talking to the 3rd through 5th graders while feeding the ducks. It’s a great joy to do this and field diverse questions of the students. (A frequent one: “Do the ducklings have names?”  Answer: “No, because we can’t tell them apart.”)

Another adorable week-old duckling:

. . . and here’s a photo I took yesterday. Look how they’ve grown! These are 19-day-old ducklings, so this represents about two weeks of growth from the photos above. Don’t worry; I have more photos and videos documenting their growth. These have full crops as they’ve just been fed.

And Mordecai, ever watchful (and plump). He seems to have disappeared, and I hope he returns. But his job as father is largely done. He did try to drive away invading drakes, but now Esther will have to do that herself. (I was told that last night she drove away three drakes!)