Duck doings, part 2: Vashti’s baby’s hatch, attempted capture of brood

Here’s the second part of “duck doings” (first part here), this part recounting the attempt to capture Vashti and her brood before it got to the pond, where it would harassed out by the resident aggressive ducks. I’ll put it up for the record, as part 1 didn’t attract much interest.

On May 15, Vashti was gone from the pond most of the day, and it was that day I marked on my calendar as the day she began incubating her eggs.  Since incubation is about 28 or 29 days, I calculated that her babies would hatch around June 12 or 13, and also marked those on my calendar as “jump days.”  As with last time, the spoiled hen came down from the nest about once a day in the afternoon to get a good cleaning, preening, and of course a big meal. I observed her as she flew back to the next, and, sure enough, she went back to the identical first-floor windowsill in Erman Hall, right beside the pond.  When I first went inside to see what was going on, she had laid eggs in the very same nest she used last time. The room inside the windowsill was a largely unused lab, and her nest was now well hidden by ivy, so she had only a small chance of being disturbed.

There were 7 light-green eggs in the nest. It was hard to photograph through a screen from the inside, but here’s the nest with eggs (I ran inside and took a photo while she was having her daily meal/spa break, which lasted anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes:

Vashti on the nest. Note that it’s lined with soft duck down, which she had plucked from her breast to cushion the eggs.  She turns the eggs from time to time so that they incubate evenly.

I took a video of her flying up to her windowsill nest.  It happened quickly, and she’d do it only when other ducks were not around, presumably to avoid interlopers going after her or the eggs. Sometimes I’d have to spend a long time keeping aggressive ducks away from her while she bathed and ate, and then away from the main pond when she was ready to fly up. Note the Armon is nearby to guard her.

Here are Armon and Vashti before she left the pond to incubate her eggs:

And Vashti having her meal during incubation. What she’s eating here are pellets of Mazuri Waterfowl Maintenance Diet: a complete diet for ducks that I buy in 50-pound bags. I also give the ducks freeze-dried mealworms that I get from Amazon. They are a real treat: the ducks love them above all other foods, and they are packed with protein and lipids.  These are spoiled ducks, I tell you.  (Babies are fed Mazuri Waterfowl Starter, which is nearly identical to the adult diet but comes in smaller pellets that the babies are able to ingest.)

A few pictures of the handsome Armon, who was an attentive, protective, and handsome father.  I love the curly feathers on his butt, and can’t help but think that females look at them when assessing whether a drake could be their mate:

Ignore the duck poop. . .

Armon drinking, too lazy to get into the water. This is what we call a “Dali Duck“.

And a headshot of dad:

The rest of the story can be related briefly.  I observed Vashti every time she flew down from the nest, and the upshot was that if the other ducks (another pair plus itinerant drakes) saw her, they would go after her, forcing her to fly off the pond. (She would return, but I sometimes had to keep those ducks away from her.)

I concluded that, like the first time she had ducklings, this time would also result in her leaving the pond after too much aggression.  And that would mean death for all the ducklings. The only alternative was to somehow capture her and her brood, ideally keeping them together for release in a safer pond.  The people in facilities (I won’t reveal their names, but one woman in particular was an enormous help) put their heads together and designed an open-topped cage of fine mesh to be put below the window, so the ducklings would be trapped in it when they jumped. The open top would ensure that mom would fly in to be with her babies.

Here’s the cage. Facilities also wired off the window wells and put down mulch to cushion the babies. (Another shout out to them!)  Note that it covers ground beneath three windows in case some of the ducklings jumped sideways.  I’ve circled the window where the nest was.

A side view:

My job was to check on the nest from the inside every day starting about June 8, looking for signs of hatching (broken eggshells, little heads poking out from beneath Vashti, etc.) That would mean that the ducklings would come down the next day. And that would give me time to warn Facilities of the imminent jump, who in turn would alert the volunteers at Chicago Bird Collision Monitors, who have expertise in capturing ducklings and mothers (they can often get both), who could then be transported to safety.

Well, on June 9 there was no sign of hatching that I could see. It turned out that I missed it.  For the next day, on June 10, I came down to the pond at 6:30 a.m. and there was a ruckus.  I heard a  lot of quacking, and both ducks from the aggressive pair were standing on the pond edge in front of the cage: And, sure enough, Vashti and her brood (I counted six or seven) were inside in the cage, with Vashti running back and forth and quacking, desperate to get to the water—water that would mean death.

Caged Vashti and babies:

I quickly called both CBCM and Facilities, and CBCM dispatched two volunteers to the pond to try to get both the brood and Vashti. In the meantime, I sat across the pond to ensure that the aggressive ducks didn’t somehow get into the cage and wreak havoc.

I noticed, however, that three ducklings were outside the cage.  I didn’t know how that happened, for it was extremely well designed to seal off the area.  One of the ducklings, however, was trapped in the mesh, with his tiny head and wings inside  and its butt and little legs on the outside.  Perhaps they got out through the mesh when Vashti was in the pond.  It took me about ten minutes to free the trapped one, holding its wings against the body while gently manipulating its legs and butt so I could gradually ease it into the pen. (The two loose ones were easily grabbed as they were desperate to stay close to mom.) That done, all the ducklings were then penned up with mom.

The cage had done its job.  But could the whole group be rescued, keeping the family together?  That would be a tough one, for though the CBCM people are experts, a perturbed wild mallard hen is very difficult to capture.

The CBCM people came at 8 a.m.: two young women with nets. I had prepared a “duck box”: a small cardboard box lined with my old but clean tee-shirts to cushion the babies for transport. (I have no idea how they were going to carry the mom, as all they had with them were nets.)

At any rate, the CBCM people were very patient, boxed a few ducklings, and left a couple in the pen so their peeping would attract Vashti. (She few off, of course, when they came near the pen, but stayed nearby.) Then they patiently waited, one on either side of the pen, hoping to net Mom when she was either inside the pen or beside it.

This volunteer is holding two ducklings in her hands:

Patiently waiting to see if Vashti could be gotten:

In the end, they made several game tries. The woman on the right even tried approaching the net from in the water!  (Unfortunately, she slipped and went under.).  But despite patient waiting punctuated with sudden approaches and swinging of nets, Vashti got away. In the meantime I had gone back to my office as I couldn’t deal with the anxiety.  When I came outside half an hour later, the ducklings and volunteers were gone: they had apparently taken all seven ducklings in my rescue box. But Vashti was still there, swimming around the pond and quacking forlornly. It broke my heart, for she had lost her second brood. I tried to feed her, but she would not eat.

That was the outcome.  Although it did a number on me, in the end I think the outcome was good given that my decision to put this in motion was based solely on the desire to save the lives of the babies. There were three possible outcomes:

a.) The ducklings and Vashti all could be allowed to get into the pond.  They would last only a day there before they were driven off by other mallards, and all the babies would die.

b.) Vashti and her brood would all be captured and released together in a distant pond. That sounded like the best outcome, and indeed would be if the aim was to let the family live their lives in nature.

c.) The brood could be captured but not Vashti. The ducklings would then be taken to a rehab facility where, I’m told, survivorship is over 90%.

What happened was “c”, of course.  It could not be helped, and we avoided the deadly outcome of a).  I am trying to tell myself that c.) is in one way better than b.), since ducklings in the wild, even with their mothers, have a very low survival rate. Grok tells me that mallard hens that survive to adulthood can live 5-10 years, having a clutch size averaging 8-9 eggs.  If we assume that a wild hen has a reproductive life of 7 years, with 8 eggs per year, then she will produce about 56 babies in her lifetime.  If the population of ducks is stable, only two of those babies will survive to keep the population stable, replacing the mother and father.  That gives an estimate of mortality in the wild of about 96%—much higher than the 10% in rehab. (Our mortality for ducklings that breed in the pond is in line with that.)

So perhaps more lives were saved with option c, the one that transpired.  Or so I tell myself.  Balanced against that is whatever heartbreak Vashti feels at losing a brood, and I have no doubt that she feels some sense of unfulfillment and even, perhaps, whatever sadness a duck is capable of feeling. Vashti and Armon are no longer in the pond: the only residents is the pair of Mean Ducks.  I have started feeding them; I didn’t before as I wanted them to leave, but I see no point in now punishing ducks now for having acted like ducks.  I am hoping that Vashti will return and things will settle down, and I have given up hope that ducklings will live and grow to maturity in Botany Pond this year.

We could not predict that the invading ducks would be aggressive. But that’s small consolation for having a pond without ducklings this summer.