This morning a friend who works in the department office called me and said “there are two ducks in the pond.” I instantly knew that this would be a male/female pair of mallards scoping out the pond as a potential nesting and rearing site. Within one minute I grabbed my camera and my container of adult duck food (I saved it from last year; I have plenty and it’s still good), and ran down to the pond.
Sure enough, there was a pair of mallards at the far (south) end. Moreover, then swam near me when I whistled, though they didn’t come right up to me. This suggests that these are the mallards knew me, though, based on bill patterns in the hen, I don’t think they are Esther and Mordecai from last year.
Those ducks were named because they arrived on the Jewish holiday of Purim, and, sure enough, that holiday is tomorrow. These are again Jewish ducks and will have to be named accordingly.
I am so happy. There is no guarantee they’ll stay, but food is thin on the pond, and I am making sure they know it is a place to get a nice meal. After filling their tummies, they retired back to the south end for a rest.
Photos. First, the pair (name suggestions welcome, especially Jewish-themed names—but not Mordecai and Esther):
The hen:
The hen eating (out of focus). They were hungry!
The drake, dripping water from his bill after having eating a food pellet (I give them only the best):
The hen’s bill:
This is Esther from last year. The bill pattern of today’s hen is clearly different, so the hen we have now is not Esther. But there’s no guarantee that this one will breed here (remember, Esther was our first ground-nesting female). Note that today’s duck lacks Esther’s black markings on the top and tip of her bill, and those should have remained over a year.
Stay tuned for 2026 Duck Adventures.
Continuing with the Purim theme, you could have Xerxes and Vashti.
Excellent suggestion!
Glad that there are ducks again at Botany Pond.
Solomon & Queen of.
Wonderful! I second the suggestion of Vashti as she has a lovely profile.
Hooray!
Wonderful! And the photos have refreshing, beautiful color and detail!
🦆[hen emoji missing]🥚🐣
And… there’s some Jewish names I know that I think have the … je ne sais quoi 😁 … but mostly only from pop culture and such, e.g:
Morty and Helen (anyone know them?)
… or how ’bout :
Judit (Polgar)
Ada (Yonath)
… hmm…
Hamantaschen and Kreplach?
LOL!
Hopefully this couple are fairly correct about their timing with springtime conditions prevailing soon. For some odd reason, I like the names Asher and Devorah for these two even though I’m not familiar with the story I just found (“The Gift of Asher Lev”)-a French couple with those names.
Yay! That pond needed ducks. Let’s hope your tasty snacks mean they don’t duck out. May they remain happily together.
Longest Jewish married couple? “Zechariah and Shama’a have been married for 91 years. As Jewish orphans in Yemen, they married young to avoid being wed outside of their faith and culture.” 91 years.
Zechariah and Shama’a are nice names.
They would be quackers to leave this duck pond!
Rachel and Sammy?
Golda and Yitzhak
Good news.
Any sign that the turtles made it through the winter?
One has and we don’t know about the other four yet.
“Malachi” for the male mallard, because I like alliteration. “Zipporah” (which means “bird”) for the female.
It’s a mouthful but Ahasuerus and Hamantaschen
This is really a bright light for the afternoon here after a full morning of very depressing news from around the world. I am confused on your remark on the photos. Looks like the new hen has black markings on top and tip of bill, not Esther.
Since you cannot recycle Mordecai and Esther, you could still honor them by borrowing your names from the Shoshanat Yaakov, the joyful Purim song after the Megillah.
Jacob and Shoshana. She can be the first lily on your pond (or its blooming rose, if you prefer that translation).
Oh oh also :
Jascha (Heifetz)
Good to hear the ducks are back. Suggested names: David and Delilah.
I’m happy for you. You love your ducks.
Lovely to see some ducks back, maybe the others will return later. 🤞
Happy news! Hope they decide it is a perfect place to raise a family.
I’ve forgotten the name of the first duck. Dorothy? Or was Dorothy not the first?
I think Honey was the first named duck.
Honey wa the first named duck, and came for about five successive years. Dorothy was about two years after that.
Thanks to the both of you. In my world, Honey was the first duck. I never took much notice of ducks until WEIT 🙂
Call one Jerry!
I named my (now 12 weeks old!) puppy “David” after me.
Gets a lot of laughs. 🙂
D.A.
NYC
ps – boss – please stay out of the water.
That is funny.
I’ll go in if I have to go in to save ducklings and the like.
What a nice distraction. I bet they’ll stick around; being fed consistently with yummy pellets is irresistible. (Or so I’ve heard 🦆)
Glad to come to this happy news after a long day. The photos are fine, too.
Good chance that one of them is one of the ducklings from a past year, I guess. If you wanted to have the ducklings banded, could you? (Do the ornithology folks band ducks?)
No, and I’m not allowed to band them myselves, or even touch them. I would prefer them to remain untouched.
YAY!
Ruth and Boaz?
Gorgeous female duck. She should be on the cover of some magazine!
How about this?
Two of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto revolt against the Nazis were Antek Zuckerman and Tzivia Lubetkin. They survived the war, married and settled in Israel, in a kibbutz established by survivors of the ghetto uprisings. That kibbutz is a major center of Holocaust education in Israel.
Their granddaughter became the first modern female fighter pilot in the Israel Air Force, flying numerous combat missions.
So—
Antek and Tzivia?