I was sitting in my office hoping for a peaceful Sunday when I got a call from a Team Duck member at the pond. Trouble! There was a mother with two newborn babies, one of which had already been brutally pecked by other adults and was near death, while the second one was swimming on his own in fear, chased by two hens (not Audrey). A student plucked the near-dead one from the pond, and I chased down and netted the other one when he went onto land. That one was in good shape. (They are very fast when they run!) There’s a small chance that the badly pecked one will live (he was almost motionless but still breathing), but the other was in good nick and will survive. We immediately took them both to the Rehab Lady.

It’s late in the season and I still have to rescue ducklings (this time I only had to put a foot in the pond). I want this to be over so we can concentrate on Audrey and her brood.  Finding tiny ducklings in the pond, only a day old, and having to save them before they’re slaughtered, well, it’s very stressful and makes me depressed for several days.

Here’s the one who came through okay. Note the white spot at the tip of its beak? That’s the “egg tooth”—a protuberance that they use to peck out of the egg and then shed within a day or so. That shows that this one is a newborn.

Unfortunately, the mother who left the pond with her six babies returned this morning, and the usual fracas of pecking and fighting ensued.

This time I was determined to save the babies, as they had no chance given the assault they were under from both Audrey and her babies.  And, of the six that were there, I managed to catch five, which are going in today for rehab. They are all dried off and resting, and in an hour they’ll go to the rehabber.

And I had to jump back in the pond to get them all (I got two that way), so I’m in for another bout of swimmer’s itch. It’s worth it, though, for this:

The sixth one, tragically, was pecked to death by Audrey and her brood on the duck plaza.  All told, we rescued six of the original eight, which isn’t bad. But it’s so sad to deprive a mother of her babies this way, and vice versa. And the fighting and killing is more than we can bear.

Audrey and her twelve, of course, are doing splendidly.

Posting may be light for the rest of the day.

A quick update: the new brood of ducklings that invaded the pond the other day (with one being killed and one taken for rehab) has left the area: six babies and the mom have apparently walked off Botany Pond. Of course that saves them the uninterrupted harassment and pecking from Audrey’s brood that did one of them in, and saves us a lot of stress from having to see it, but of course the problem didn’t go away. That new brood still must find a new body of water, and there are none very close to here (at least a mile and a half at most). If they can’t find water, the babies will die.

This departure may just have moved the problem elsewhere, out of sight. Poor ducklings!

When I began tending the ducks at Botany Pond six years ago, there were only five mallards: Honey and her brood of four. (I have no idea how many she started with.) For the thirty years before that, I occasionally glanced at the ducks as I walked by, but never paid much attention.

When I began feeding Honey and her half-grown brood for fun, I found they were very tame. They’d swim up to me, eat out of my hands, and also out of the hands of the Lab School kids whom I introduced to the ducks. I got hooked on the birds, and after hours of watching them discovered that they not only have a repertoire of complex behaviors, but are also very smart. They learn quickly. Audrey’s brood learned to negotiate the duckling ramp on their first day in the water, and both young and adults recognize the people who feed them. They have a suite of adaptations to escape capture and predation.

Only gradually did I realize that these mallards are wild animals who come to Botany Pond all their wild instincts, and some of those instincts are not pleasant. There was occasional aggression, and when two broods entered the pond at about the same time, the aggression escalated. About two years ago, Dorothy killed one of Honey’s ducklings. There was also a lot of pecking, duck fighting, and one brood of five even left the pond with their mother, probably because they couldn’t take the harassment from other ducks. Those babies probably perished.

What distresses me about all this is that I can’t do much to stop it. Ducks will be ducks.  When there were orphans in the pond, I was almost always able to jump in with a net and rescue them, taking them to rehab where they’d almost surely survive. But I didn’t always succeed, despite my motto of “No duckling left behind.”

I did not succeed yesterday. From the outset, as soon as the new brood of eight—or was it nine?—entered the pond, Audrey was determined to drive them out. There were fights between the two mothers, each would peck babies from the other’s brood, and young ducks from the older brood would peck at the younger ones. I tried using my squirt gun to separate them, but that worked poorly: the broods would get mixed up and the pecking would begin again. I began to realize that I could not sort this out. It was up to nature, and nature doesn’t always favor coexistence.

My friends on Team Duck told me to leave the pond, as I was getting pretty upset, and so I did. I heard shortly thereafter by phone that one dead newborn duckling was found in the channel, undoubtedly pecked to death. Another, harried to exhaustion, was plucked out of the pond by a member of Team Duck and taken to rehab. I have little doubt that the fighting continued overnight.

In previous years, the acrimony has decreased as the season progressed, with different broods learning to tolerate each other, though warily. There was a bit of pecking, but it wasn’t serious.

I am not so sure that will be the case this year. In about an hour I will go downstairs for the morning feeding, and I dread what I will find. I’ll have to fish the body of the dead duckling (so small!) out of the channel, and there may be other carnage.

But even though things may settle down, my impotence at alleviating the situation makes me depressed and anxious. Knowing that I’ve saved the lives of other ducklings doesn’t help, for the life of a single duckling is all it has.

When people criticize me for expending so much effort to tend the mallards and feed the the babies, I remember the old Hebrew saying, “Whoever kills one life kills the world entire, and whoever saves one life saves the world entire.” That holds for humans as well as animals, and of course means that for the individual saved, their life was the world entire. Yesterday one duckling lost its world.

This is about the ducks, not me, but I have to add that today I am anxious and distressed.  When I think of an innocent duckling being attacked for reasons it can’t understand, well, it breaks my heart and makes me tear up.

Forgive me if posting is light or nonexistent today, for I lack the enthusiasm that usually drives this website.

When feeding Audrey and her babies their lunch, I noticed that there were more than 12 ducks in the pond. In fact, there are now 18, as a mother has shown up with her one-day-old brood. I am of course nervous, but the moms seem to be getting along and have even sorted out their broods. But there’s a long way to go, so I can’t help but be concerned.

“NO DUCKLING LEFT BEHIND”.

It’s raining, so I’ll send pictures when it clears up.

UPDATE: Aggression has started: moms going after each other, mixing up the babies, the big babies pecking the little babies, and each mother pecking the brood of the other mother. I’m now quite worried about what will happen.

Today we have both photos and videos of Audrey’s brood of 12. Yes, all twelve are still here, and are getting bigger and bigger. Further, their first feathers are starting to come in on their tails, which are somewhat elevated and a little spiky.

One thing that pleases me is that they regularly use the duckling ramp to exit the pond, usually after meals when they take a rest. There are few egresses from the pond, and Facilities hasn’t yet fixed the other ramp, which descends into the water at an angle too steep for ducklings to surmount. Still they can get out in two other places.

Here they are walking up the ramp to mom. (All videos by Jean Greenberg).

They often rest on the ramp as well, as it’s sunny and smooth. Here are photos of the traffic jam:

Sometimes they have to struggle to either find a space on the ramp or bypass the resting ducklings to get up to mom. A video:

Napping on the ramp, with their little nictitating membranes closed.

Besides resting, another postprandial ramp activity is grooming. Ducks are immaculate birds, and frequently groom themselves. In the adults, this also helps spread waterproofing oil over the feathers.

When mom’s at the top of the ramp, they often feel secure enough to lie a foot or two feet away, or on the ramp. Here are several shots of a brood besides Audrey.

And they occasionally stretch their legs in what we call “duckling ballet”:

She’s a very attentive mom—one of the best we’ve had. Here she looks out for danger as the babies eat duckling pellets.

They’ve starting playing, too. They pop under the water and then bob up like a cork, or even swim a few feet underwater. This is actually an escape behavior, and play is practice. They also zoom, swimming much faster than you think they could. Some video:

And of course they must learn the most valuable skill of all: dabbling. That involves turning upside down and grabbing a beakful of food or mud from the pond bottom. If they get mud, they squeeze it out of the bill, with the food being caught on baleen-like “teeth” on the inner bill. This is one of their first dabbles:

So far so good! The ducklings are ten days old today. In a month or so they should start rudimentary flight behavior, which begins at about six weeks.

A photo by Jean of them resting on the south “duck island” with their fat little tummies hanging over the edge. Mom, of course, is standing watch nearby.