Category: ducklings

The golden days of the ducklings: photos and videos

September 14, 2026 • 9:45 am

I expect the ducklings to start flying within ten days or so, as they’re zooming around on the pond and, as you can see below, are getting some elevation, so that their bodies are out of the water but their feet are still in it. These are their Golden Days, and I think they’ll soon be leaving.

At any rate, Miss Duck is still absent and I don’t expect to see her again. I doubt she was the victim of a predator, as I cannot find any signs of predation (blood, feathers, carcasses, etc.) near the pond.  And although she deserted her babies, she was a good mother up to near the end, and her four offspring will have the chance to contribute to the mallard gene pool.

Here she is with one of her babies. Look at that neck! We think of it as a kind of periscope that she extended when looking around. And, thanks to the miracle of genetics, all four ducklings also have relatively long necks.

Some photos of her offspring. They are all but adults now.  One is looking up, as you can see by his tilted head.  I’m told that the females have orange on their bills (the two to the left) while the males lack orange but have a pale yellow color (two to the right):

Here a Boy Duck is quacking, but males can’t make the classic duck quack, which is limited to females. Males make a sort of gutteral quack-grunt that is lower in volume:

The two males. They won’t develop their characteristic color and pattern (green head, white neck ring, etc.) until they overwinter.

But despite their bad behavior during mating season, the males are still beautiful.

It was hot on this day, and two of the ducks are doing gular fluttering, which is not panting but a rapid form of fluttering of the throat that evaporates moisture and cools the bird. The second duck from the right is looking up, while the one on the extreme left is sleeping with its nictitating membrane closed:

Lately the ducklings aren’t as keen for the food I give them, and my theory (which is mine) is that they are doing more dabbling in the water, sticking their bills in the substrate to get a mouthful of food which they strain out through the serrations on the edge of their bills. They are also foraging more on land, which I like because tmust learn to be wild ducks without a nice man to feed them.

They often stick their bills in the dirt around the pots of plants installed in the pond. Here’s a video of them doing it (humans are discussing a book in the background):

I expect that they’ll fly for real (i.e., bodies and feet out of the water) within a week or ten days.  They are flapping their wings a lot and, after meals, zoom across the pond, occasionally levitating their bodies out of the water: a Wright-Brothers type of flight.

Here’s a big flap. You can see that the wing feathers aren’t full-sized.

And four instances of zooming between September 9 and September 11. You can see their bodies leave the water occasionally:

Wing flapping, which develops their flight muscles:

You can never predict when they’ll zoom, but it’s much more likely after meals, as if they’re celebrating a good feed. You can also hear a quack, which is clearly from a female.

Here’s a good case of the zoomies which took place last Friday. People who stop by the pond and see this have no idea what’s going on. Keep watching as they zoom several times in this clip. There is another quack near the end.

How they’ve grown!

September 13, 2026 • 11:00 am

I have a passel of new duckling photos and videos that I’ll post soon. In the meantime, I wanted to show how much the “babies” have grown. The first picture of Miss Duck’s brood was taken on the second day after hatching, July 20. You’ve seen this before:

And here they are in a similar pose a week ago (Sept. 6). They’re even bigger than than this now, and their wings and flight feathers have grown. I think they’ll be flying in some way within ten days.

And no, Miss Duck has not shown up after she abandoned her babies. We’ve rescinded her award of Best Duck Mother of All Time, though the orphan babies are doing very well.

Miss Duck has left the pond

September 7, 2026 • 11:35 am

For reasons I don’t understand, Miss Duck left Botany Pond three days ago and has not returned. There are no signs of a predator attack, and my best guess is that she just felt it was time for her to leave. Unfortunately, she leaves behind the brood of four, who seem quite discombobulated without their mom around. The only good part is that they’re seven weeks and one day old, and will be flying on their own very soon.

The brood hangs around together as they have all along, but seem aimless, and their appetite is definitely down. I am not too worried, but I do feed them as much as they can handle and I talk to them as they do know my voice. (I learned today they can recognize it over the telephone.)

I don’t know if I’ll ever see Miss Duck again, but she proved to be somewhat of a worse mother than we thought. Maybe she’ll return next spring; if she does she’ll get a stiff lecture (but after a big meal). I have some duck pictures left to post, but that will be later. For the time being, here is Miss Duck (when she was on the Pond):

New Botany Pond videos and photos, featuring Miss Duck and her Brood of Four

September 1, 2026 • 8:30 am

It’s time for another report on the ducks of Botany Pond. (No turtle report today, but we now have six after two new ones were put into the Pond.)

The Brood of Four, having hatched on July 18 and entered the Pond the next day, are thriving, as you can see below. They have turned into miniatures of Miss Duck, though a bit smaller and lacking their flight feathers. But they are vigorous, healthy, and have good appetites. They have been on the water six weeks and two days, and should be making the first tentative efforts at flight within two weeks.  Miss Duck is doing well, too, and is as attentive as always, though she allows her brood somewhat more independence than before (they often swim all over the pond without alarming her.)

Look at these lovely “ducklings” (click photos to enlarge them, and also enlarge the video):

All the photos and the video below were made at the end of August. Here’s a duckling looking happy. It doesn’t yet know that it will soon be flying.

Often Miss Duck and the brood repair to the edge of the pond for a nap after a meal. Here she is alone, waiting for the ducklings to join her. People love to watch the ducks, as you can see below. Sometimes I have to tell people not to get too close to the resting mallards lest they disturb the naps.

Very often now Miss Duck and her brood engage in zooming after a meal. It looks as if they’re having fun, and they may well be, but I think this is also preparation for flight. Miss Duck often leads the way, flying in a short hop in front of her brood. They zoom along towards her, flapping their growing but still ineffectual wings.  Listen for the “quack” in this two-minute video, and be sure to watch the whole thing, as it shows dunking, flying, and zooming.

. . . and a few action shots of Miss Duck splashing in the water and preening:

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Preening:

Preening in focus:

Soon they will be flying, and perhaps flying away, and I’ll feel like a parent whose kid has gone off to college. I will be, literally, an empty nester.

PCC(E)’s wildlife photos and videos: Duck update

August 28, 2026 • 8:30 am

The “ducklings”—if you can call them that now that they’re fully feathered and miniature adults—are almost six weeks old: they hatched on July 25 and came to the pond the next day. All is well with them: they all seem healthy and lively, and they eat heartily, though Miss Duck allows the babies to eat before she does. It’s hard to get food to her as her brood tends to scarf it up.

The babies are already starting to flap their wings vigorously, as you can see in the videos below, and I expect that in about 2-3 weeks they’ll be trying to fly, and levitating a bit. I suspect that the “zooming” behavior you see below is both fun but also practice for taking off.

But first some photos. First, Miss Duck, the ever-attentive mom who is still monitoring the babies closely. She’a also starting to molt, and during this period she will be able to flap and levitate a bit, but when she molts her flight feathers she’ll be pretty much grounded for a couple of weeks.

First, Miss Duck on the water. I love this photo, what with the reflection and all. (I posted it the other day.)

On the edge of the pond, watching her brood. Notice that her foot is on the side and not underneath her:

And a glamour head shot. If she returns next year I’ll be able to recognize her by this distinctive beak pattern.

Here’s the brood crossing the sidewalk in the morning so I can feed them in the channel. As soon as they plop in the water (I won’t feed them on land), they immediately turn and face me, waiting for their duck pellets. They know the drill!

Make way for ducklings!  You can see that Mom is still larger:

Sleeping on the water six days ago (iPhone photo). Mom is floating:

Often Miss Duck and the brood will get the “zoomies” after a meal. Usually initiated by Miss Duck taking off and flying a short distance in the pond, the ducklings go wild, zooming across the pond at high speed chasing Mom, as well as dunking themselves and swimming underwater. I’m convinced that, with Mom’s prompting, this behavior prepares them for flight. Notice how they often flap their wings during the exercise.

I’ll show two bouts. This first one took place after third breakfast a week ago (they get fed three times a day):

And here’s a vigorous case of the soomies yesterday:

The babies also “dabble” after meals. In the wild, they get most of their food by going butt-side up and thrusting their beak into the pond bottom, taking in some mud and then squeezing out the dirt but keeping the edible stuff (worms, other inverts, etc.). As I’ve shown before, ducks have “teeth”: serrations on their bill that allow them to get rid of the inedible stuff and keeping the food. In this way they’re like baleen whales.

Since the pond bottom is gravel and not dirt (a huge mistake in the pond design), the dabbling takes place in the dirt in the few pots of plants that they’ve put in the pond, which have dirt in them. Unfortunately, the plants cannot spread because the pond bed is gravel. It’s beyond my ken why they designed the pond this way, for it will prevent the luxurious growth of aquatic grasses and water lilies we were promised when the pond was reopened.

Here’s one duckling dabbling in an empty plant pot in mid-August.  At this time they still had their duckling fuzz, but you can see the feathers coming in. Now they are fully feathered and fuzzless, but their flight feathers have a way to go.

And here’s a napping duckling with almost all the feathers grown in.  There’s still a patch of fuzz on the butt and neck.

Ducklings napping on the edge of the pond. They always do this in the full group of four, and Miss Duck is among them, usually at one end of the line so she can watch them all. The “white” covering in the eye is their nictitating membrane.

The babies are starting to develop the speculum: the patch of blue  secondary wing feathers that you can see on Miss Duck’s wing above. It is one of the landmarks of attaining adulthood.  I’ve circled the nascent speculum in the first photo. Curiously, we’re not sure what this speculum is for. It’s present in both sexes, but could be the result of mutual sexual selection or selection for species recognition.

The nascent speculum is clear here:

The brood heading to one of the three Sacred Rocks to rest after a meal. There’s lot of dunking and preening before they settle down. Notice that Miss Duck gets up on the rock to let the babies know where to go.

DANGER!  There is a nest of Cooper’s Hawks (Astur cooperii) in the quad, and the young hawks often inspect the pond. Miss Duck sees them before we do, and she warns the babies with a specific quack. They immediately become motionless. While I’ve seen the hawks fly low over the pond, they’ve never tried to take a duckling, thank Ceiling Cat.

These photos were taken three days ago by my friend Peggy Mason, a neurobiologist on Team Duck. The tree is adjacent to the Pond, but I let Peggy take a few pictures before I chased the hawk away.

The definitive ID comes from Bruce Lyon, who looked at the photos and said, “Yes I think it’s a Cooper’s. I had to double check that it was not a broad-winged hawk. Looks like it is molting its tail so it is shorter than typical and a long tail would indicate Coopers’.”

And we musn’t forget the turtles. We now have six of them. We originally had five but one died (I was told, without proof , that its shell was cracked when students were playing Frisbee with it). But then a student found a large red-eared slider on the Midway, far from the pond, and carried it over and let it jump in. That made five again. Then a smaller red-eared slider appeared, probably another willful introduction.

They are all well and many people come to watch them. A group of women who work in the Regenstein Library regularly visit, and they’ve named all the turtles after hamburger-ish sliders, like “Buffalo Chicken Wing” and “Beef”. Unlike me, they can recognize every turtle.

A few photos of our terrapins. Here are four sunning on the rocks and doing Turtle Yoga, stretching their limbs to catch the sun:

You can see why they call them red-eared sliders (Trachemys scripta elegans):

Finally, two videos showing the turtles. This first one also shows some of the seven species of fish we have in the pond. All are naturally-occurring (as are sliders and ducks), but there are four pesky goldfish that someone is going to remove and put in an aquarium.

This turtle is going after some leftover duck food, but they do get fed a healthy diet of turtle food (not by me):

This video shows how they swim around. They’re quite fast in the water when they’re in a hurry, in contrast to their slow ambling on land:

Tuesday duck report

August 18, 2026 • 8:30 am

Allow me once again to enchant/bore you with photos of my babies. The ducklings were one month old on Saturday, but they entered the pond the next day, so their official “monthiversay” as pond denizens was Sunday. They’re in their second month now, and are rapidly growing feathers and longer wings. By the end of another month, they’ll be on the verge of flying.

First, some photos and then two short videos. (Click the photos to enlarge them.)

Miss Duck continues to be a terrific mother, always in attendance with the brood. Here she is overlooking them last Friday as they rested after “Second Lunch” (they get fed three times a day). They’re now too large to all fit atop the Sacred Rock that you can barely see peeking over the pond edge in the middle, and so they must rest on the edge itself.  They are now large enough to leap up to the edge.

Note the feathers; they are looking like miniature ducks:

The family resting yesterday on the west side of Botany Pond. The “babies” are together and Miss Duck, of course, is nearby.

Below: a close-up of three babies, who get more and more feathered each day. I’m now told that you can sex the babies with fair accuracy by looking at their bills. If they have yellowish-orange corners, they are supposedly female, while black or brown corners denote males. According to that lore, the duckling on the right is a female, and the two others drakes.

In the photo just above (click to enlarge it), there appear to be two hens and two drakes, with the two hens being the middle two babies. A nicely sex-balanced brood.

And, just to remind you, here they are just a month before, at two days old. How they’ve grown! I needn’t add how much joy these changes bring to me; though they lose their cuteness, they become functioning ducks who can fly off and see the world.

And let’s have a hand for Miss Duck, Mallard Mother of the Year.  Here’s a closeup from the group sitting above. Note that the distal corners of her bill are orange. The dark color of the bill, with an orangish tip, will be a diagnostic phenotype I’ll look for next year when hens return to the pond. She also is more grayish than most hens, which usually have a brown cast.

This is Honey the Duck from 2023, looking more brown (and also more spherical):

The video below was taken last Sunday after Second Lunch. Although the ducks are usually full then and head to the south island for a postprandial rest, they are often a bit frisky for a short period and dunk, swim underwater, and zoom in the water. Here the whole family, including Miss Duck, gets the zoomies, apparently set off by Miss Duck taking flight at the beginning.  Then the babies zoom after her and, when she flies back, zoom in her new direction.

Their little legs and feet must be paddling furiously when they go this fast; I’d love to have an underwater video of these zoomies. Note 12 seconds in when two ducklings flap their stubby little wings. Little do they know that those stubs will soon be carrying them up to the sky!

This short video shows Miss Duck pecking at both a turtle (1 second in) and then a fish (11 seconds in) at feeding time. Neither species poses a threat to her or her babies, but I guess in nature some turtles (like snappers) and some fish are dangerous to the brood. Miss Duck, not knowing the difference, is, I think, following her evolutionary imperative and simply driving away anything of a size that could have been dangerous over evolutionary time.

And a screenshot from the PondCam showing visitors admiring the turtles on the north island and the duck family arrayed on the east side of the Pond. Be sure to watch the PondCam from time to time; you might even see me at feeding time (6:30 a.m., 10:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. or thereabouts, all Chicago time) giving the ducks their comestibles.