It’s time for a Sunday Duck Report. Esther’s brood hatched on May 6, and so today they are 26 days old, coming on to four weeks. As we’ll see at the bottom, in the last week or so they’ve started growing their feathers.

Here are some videos and pictures of the brood, most taken around May 20 when they were two weeks old.

The brood (still six):

A swimming duckling. They are starting to look like big ducks, though they still have their baby down:

A diving duckling. It’s learning a skill that will help it not only forage, but also escape predators:

They get fed two or three times a day and are coming quite close to us. (I whistle for them, a call that they recognize as “feeding time,” but all I really have to do is show up at the pond with my bag ‘o duck food, and they coming swimming towards me rapidly.)

By the way, they get a good diet: Mazuri duck chow, which is a complete diet. Esther and big ducks get big pellets (I get this in 50 lb. bags), while the babies get the same thing, but in smaller pellets since their bills are too small to engulf the big ones (this “waterfowl starter chow” I get in 25-lb bags).  As a special treat, they get freeze-dried mealworms, which are high in fats and protein. This is their favorite food, but it’s a dessert, not the main course.

They love to enter the plastic tubs that used to be used as supports for the “plant cages”. I think of it as a duck spa:

Here are two ducklings, their swollen craws making it obvious that they just ate. They store some of the foot they eat in their esophagus.

About a week ago, the ducklings and Esther climbed up the southern “ramp” on the east side of the pond, where they’d sun themselve and then, going further into the brush, would all rest together. Here they are approaching the ramp that leads to their resting spot.  Esther always leads the way, but sometimes the brood is reluctant to land as they still want to swim and play:

More recently, since the babies have gotten large enough to jump directly out of the pond onto its edge, they like to do that together and sun themselves on the cement. Esther, of course, is always nearby.

Having a good rest:

Sometimes they pile up a few feet away from mom, but she’s always nearby. The piling up keeps them warm, as it’s been a bit chilly lately.

A video showing their postprandial resting on the edge of the pond:

A pile o’ ducklings:

Finally, in the last eight days or so the babies have been sprouting their feathers.  Feather appearance starts at the tail, in which a few tiny feathers make the tail look like a paintbrush:

. . . then the feathers start sprouting on their wings (arrow). Next stop: scruffy-looking “punk ducks” with a mixture of feathers and fluff.  Stay tuned for that!

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!)

Today is Day 11 since Esther’s ducklings hit the water, and it’s time to share some photos and video of her, Mordacai (yes, he’s still here) and their brood.

But first, we were lucky enough to get a video, courtesy of an undergraduate, of the ducklings hatching underneath Esther, whose nest, you may recall, was on the ground. This video was taken on May 6, and you can see, peeping from beneath her, newly hatched ducklings. One who just hatched is still wet from the egg, while others, a bit older are dry. There were seven total, though one disappeared the first night to unknown causes.  Be sure to listen to the gasps from the students as they see the babies: “Holy cow!”  “Oh, my god!” (I’ve shown this video before, but put it up again because it’s lovely.)

They stay under mom for the first day, and hit the water the second day, which they took to. . . well, like ducks to water. (See the photo of their first moment in the water here.)

The remnants of Esther’s rather crude nest; you can see the broken eggshells. Despite being a rather incompetent nest-builder, she’s a great mom in the water.

Click on all photos to enlarge them.

It wasn’t long before Esther took them on a tour of the pond so they could learn the surroundings.  They quickly learned to use the duck ramps so they could get out of the water and dry off in the sun. In this photo she looks proud to me, but of course that’s anthropomorphizing.

This looks like the brood of five when one duckling went missing for a day but, mirabile dictu, returned the next day. I have no idea where it was.

This video shows how they swim purposefully with the mother when Esther has decided to swim to a definite place. At other times she lollygags about and the ducklings spread out over much of the pond.

The whole family on the edge of the pond (they went up via the ramp). The faithful Mordecai is standing guard to the right.

Esther and the babies. It’s warm beneath her: I’m told about 100°F.

Mom and most of the babies napping:

Mordecai napping. He is an excellent dad, driving off alien drakes who try to make time with Esther. You can see that he’s well fed by his belly hanging over the edge. We call such individuals “Dali ducks.”

Here’s a video of the ducklings (7) discovering that there are rocks they can climb on, get some sun, and dry off.

Mother and babies:

Esther in a formal pose:

Two babies:

Ducklings looking up:

. . . and one flapping its tiny wings:

Finally, a passel of ducklings (the formal name for such a group is a “flock,” a “waddling”, or a “raft”).  Needless to say, on a nice day the pond is crowded with onlookers oohing and aahing over the babies and taking pictures of them. Right now, in the absence of any turtles or fish, the ducks and ducklings are the major attraction at Botany Pond:

After a huge amount of kerfuffle, we now have Esther and her six ducklings on the pond.  First, Esther and Mordecai foraging pre-reproduction, with the drake dabbling:

I was previously unable to show Esther’s nest nest as, for the first time in our experience, a hen nested on the ground, digging a shallow depression and laying what I thought were eleven eggs (actually, there were eight). She laid the last egg and began sitting on them on April 10. They hatched 26 days later, on May 6 (the median is about 28 days). But they don’t go to the water until the day after hatcing. It seems a lot longer than fo days! I sat by the pond all day on Water Day, and on their first full day of life (the 7th), and half a day yesterday (to protect them when the dreaded Plant Cages of Death were fixed).  One baby was found dead by the nest, and we lost one of the seven that went into the pond on the first night. But now we’re stable, I hope, at six.

Esther nested: on the ground under a tree. I became aware of it when a student named Will emailed me with this map (click to enlarge).

Here’s the site of her ground nest, under this tree (anybody know the species?)

Where she dug her nest,  It’s a good site for a ground-nesting duck, protected and hidden, but unfortunately right by a sidewalk where tons of people walk.  We immediately wanted this area to be protected.

The good people at facilities put a fence around the tree within a day. I was very grateful. The fence went around the tree except for a gap on the far side where she could walk out, though she could also swim out or fly in.

Facilities, smartly, did not put a sign on the fence lest people get curious and stick their heads in. Esther had to remain undisturbed for the nearly month of incubation.

The nest site (Esther is sitting where I’ve circled.

She would take a break from nesting for anywhere between 10 minutes to half an hour on about two of every three days. Every 15 minutes or so I looked out my window, which overlooks the pond, to see if she was in the pond, and if she was I’d run down and feed her. She was ravenous (incubating uses up considerable metabolic energy:  the temperature under her belly, where the eggs lie, is about 100° F), and she also needed a bath and a preen from sitting in the dirt. When she was off the nest, I snuck a picture of her eggs. I thought there were eleven, but I see only eight, which accounts, with the death of one outside the nest and the disappearance of another, with our present six ducklings.

This is not a great nest, and I suspect Esther is a first- or second-year hen, somewhat inexperienced. The nest should be lined with feathers she plucked from her breast, which we’ve seen in all other nests, but there are none here. The thing on the left by the cement is not an egg but a rock.

It was only when she was on the nest that I discovered how cryptic the coloration of mallard hens are. They in fact almost exactly match the color of the ground when it’s dappled with sunlight. Nobody ever noticed her after the fence was up unless I had to tell someone who was sticking their head into the fence.,  Here’s how cryptic she was sitting on her eggs. You can barely make out the white in her feathers.  This is all, of course, an adaptation to hide from predators or randy drakes.

A reveal:

She’s a bit more obvious here. She moved around, adjusting and turning the eggs so they were evenly incubated. I think they get a quarter-turn per day.

Mordecai rested patiently nearby for the whole month. He was elated at the rare times Esther came off the nest, and was by her side immediately. I couldn’t help anthropomorphize the situation, thinking he must be lonely, and wondering whether he knew what was to come. (Evolution is cleverer than you are!)

This is hatch day: May 6, 2025, the day they began coming out of the egg. This video was filmed by an undergrad, and my thanks to her.  You can see one wet duckling head underneath her; this individual must have hatched not long ago. There’s also a drier one, which hatched earlier. You can hear the undergrad say “Oh my God, oh my God”, her reaction to the fantastic end of the incubation process.  Remember that mallards are ground-nesters in nature, and she was behaving “normally.” But because all of our other ducks have incubated on safer window ledges, so we were tense for the whole months.

All day the next day, May 7, I sat on a bench near the next, protecting the fence around mother and babies from any disturbances and waiting till I knew they would hit the water. This photo was taken within a minute of their doing so. They know instinctively what to do when they enter the pond: follow the mother and SWIM. Yes, there are seven babies, and, sadly, one disappeared the first night. I couldn’t find a body despite searching the pond and the surrounding area for an hour. I think a predator got it.

Now that I can show the details of the incubation, I can put up more videos and photos of the family (Mordecai is still here, driving off intruding drakes). Stay tuned.

I am elated to report that all ten “ducklings” on the dorm plaza have taken wing and flown away.  As we predicted from the condition of their feathers, they would be ready to leave last week—and, indeed, they made their egress over that week.

Last Monday: Nine ducklings (one had left over the preceding weekend)

Last Wednesday: Seven ducklings (two more left)

Last Friday: Four ducklings (three more left)

This morning: Zero ducklings and no mom (last four left)

Here is the very first shot (iPhone camera) I took of Marie and her brood; it was June 23, and they were only a couple of days old. All ten are crowded into their tiny pool (we immediately got larger ones). Food is on the right.

And from last Monday, August 21.  It was eight weeks from hatching to flight.  Marie is on the extreme right, still watching over her seven remaining babies. Hen mallards make terrific moms!

All we can hope for now is that every offspring has found a pond or other body of water with food. I can only imagine how they felt when they were first able to swim at great length, duck and dabble under water, do zoomies, hunt for food, and take to the air on their mighty wings. They’re doing what natural selection and their genes built them to do. If that means “happiness” for ducks, then they’re happy.

We are also a bit sad that they’re gone, but that’s far outweighed by the satisfaction of Team Duck in knowing that we saved every one, and that we did our job well.

Thanks to the other members of the team, Marie and Gracemary, for sharing the hard work of tending these fowl. And thanks to the woman in charge of the dorm who, after asking us for help, cooperated with us to get food and water to the brood three times a week.