I’ll be brief, as I’ve already written too much about duck rescue.  Last night, just as I was sitting down to eat my dinner and watch the NBC Evening News, eager to see the accusations that came to light in Tuesday’s testimony, my phone rang. It was a member of Team Duck who said something like, “I didn’t want to bother you, Jerry, but I think I see a single baby on the pond. I knew you’d want to know.”

Yes, I did, but I wasn’t happy.

The laws of physics dictated that I put my dinner down, turn off the tv, and drive to the office to get the duck rescue equipment: in this case, one net and a small box lined with paper towels.  And indeed, there was a single lone, peeping duckling in the pond following two hens, with Audrey’s Killer Brood nearby.  I’m not sure whether one of those hens was its mother, but a rescue was mandated.

It was easy peasy this time: the hens flew out of the pond and the baby swam to a corner of the channel. (I had changed into swimming trunks and a tee shirt.) Easing into the water, I approached the little peepster, put the net on one side of it and slightly below it and went for it with my hand on the other side. It was trapped, and so swam into the net. Triumph! It was barely even wet.

We dried it off and drove it to the rehab lady immediately. It turned out to be one of the liveliest ducklings I’ve ever caught, bouncing around in the padded box and peeping as we drove it to rehab. Luckily, although our wonderful duck-saver is leaving for two weeks’ vacation today, she hadn’t yet sent yesterday’s ducks out for rehab. So the little guy below joined the mob, and today they’ll all be in expert hands.

It’s obviously a one-day-old duck: look at the “egg tooth” on the bill that it uses to peck its way out of the egg (see fact #5 here). This structure is not a real tooth, but a hard part of the bill used for egg egress. You can see it as the light-colored semicircle at the tip of the bill. That clearly shows that this was a newborn.  The “egg tooth” drops off after a day or so.

Of course I went home and went through the entire showering/deparasitizing routine again, but I still suspect in about two weeks I’ll be itching like hell from dead larvae in my leg. Those parasites bore in fast!  So it goes; it doesn’t worry me. Total for the day: seven saves.

Isn’t it adorable?

As I said, we managed to rescue six of the seven newborn ducklings that invaded Botany Pond this morning. We had no choice: the resident adults were already attacking the babies, and without rescue they would all have been killed within a few hours. (This isn’t normal; most hens are not killers, and we’ve had several broods coexist at Botany Pond in the past.)

We know now that the invaders were from a nest on Ryerson Hall (where Computer Sciences lives)—a very short distance from Botany Pond. We’ve been monitoring a nest on a first-floor ledge there, and hoping against hope that the brood wouldn’t hatch. But they did, for when we went back to the nest after the rescue, it was empty, the eggs were gone, and there were pieces of eggshell on the ground: a sure sign of a hatching.

Here’s the empty nest. Note the way that the mothers line it with breast feathers that they pluck from themselves: a behavior that really is touching:

And here is the box of six we rescued (both photos by Jean Greenberg). These little peepsters are already on their way to rehab at Willowbrook Wildlife Sanctuary.

I have to say a few words about my state of mind, just to get it off my chest.  These experiences are deeply upsetting for me, and it takes me days to get over them. First of all, I have to convince myself that separating the mother from the babies this way is the right thing to do. That’s because it really traumatizes the babies, who peep like crazy and want to be with their mother. The mother, too, is deeply upset; after we took her brood, she flew around the pond quacking forlornly, looking for the ducklings.

On an intellectual level I know that if the goal is to save lives, I’ve done the right thing. But you have to live through such a rescue to see the strange combination of elation and depression it induces. Everyone’s delighted when the last stray duckling is captured. The down feelings come later, when you think about  how the mom feels and how the babies miss a proper mother and normal upbringing. (Be assured, though, that Willowbrook and its net of rehabbers do a first-class job.)

No matter how hard I try, I can’t dismiss the fate of the one who died as “just something that happens in these situations.” Yes, I know that mortality among wild mallard babies has to be something above 95% (after all, in a stable population, each hen leaves just two offspring over her whole life), but my motto is “no duckling left behind.” We left one behind today—the one who was pecked to death.

I’ve been told several times to let natural selection run its course, which today would have meant standing by and watching a mass slaughter. I wonder if the people who tell me this deny veterinary care to their pets or medical care to their kids. After all, they’re interfering with natural selection!

I have no children, and one can psychologize and say that these ducks are my children. Perhaps in a sense they are, because I’m deeply committed to bringing them up healthy, and when they leave at the end of the summer I’m sad, but also satisfied that I did a good job. That maternal/paternal feeling is what all of us share on Team Duck, but perhaps I’m more emotionally invested than I should be.

I fear I’m writing nonsense, but want to let you know that I’m not writing this for assurance that I did the right thing. I am satisfied with what I did, though one duckling died. I’m writing this because there’s a weird mixture of happiness and deep sadness roiling inside me and I needed to get it out by writing.

When I was walking back to work after I went home to shower, I thought that this should be on my tombstone: “He saved a lot of ducks.”

But now I have to go give the Killer Ducks their afternoon feeding, and then go home to rest. The morning’s sloshing around in mud and water was exhausting.

There will be a slight interruption today as I rescued six newborn baby ducks from Botany Pond when the mother brought them in and was immediately attacked (I saw this on the pondcam). I went down with a butterfly net, a cardboard box, and plenty of paper towels to dry ducklings. I waited a bit until it became clear that the babies would be repeatedly attacked and killed, and then went to work. That means having to get into the damn pond.

There were seven, but one had already been killed by Audrey or another adult hens. After a lot of effort, which included going underwater several times by tripping, getting my leg cut and bare feet banged up, and swallowing a bit of pond water (ugh), I managed to rescue the remaining six. One was being pecked by Dorothy at the end, and I thought it was dead, but when I picked it up and dried it off it seemed to revive. I think it will be all right.

I’m now scrubbed, clean, and with antibiotic cream on my cut. I’m going back to work. And I’m very happy, because I saved six lives. But it’s also sad because those babies were taken from their mom, and she raced around the pond quacking like mad as I caught the little ones.  The upside is that all those babies are already on their way to rehab, and have a great chance of growing up. The downside is that it’s hard to love Audrey and her twelve babies when you know what they’re capable of. Not all adult mallard hens try to murder interlopers; sometimes several broods coexisted in Botany Pond in past years.

If you go to the Botany Pond video site, below, and wind back to about 8:15 a.m. Chicago time, you might be able to see yours truly wading around crazily, trying to catch ducks.

More to come; I wrote a post right before the fracas began, and that will be up shortly. And we have photos of the six rescued babies.

Audrey’s brood—the only brood in the pond—is now about 3½ weeks old, and they should start flying at about six or seven weeks. It’s hard to believe, because now they’re just in their scruffy teenage phase with tiny wings, and are only now starting to grow their adult feathers.

I actually have enough photos and videos for two duck reports, so I’ll put up another in about a week. But then they’ll have grown even more, and will have most of their feathers! I’m celebrating Father’s Day today with a nice dinner and wine, as I consider myself a DuckFather.

Of course Audrey, though she’s a Killer Duck, is the DuckMother, and if she could curb her homicidal instincts I’d put her up there with Honey as Duck Mother of the decade. But Honey never killed anyone.  Yet when you see Audrey attentively protecting a pile of babies on the pond edge (yes, there are still twelve), it’s hard to see her as a killer. In the end, it’s one thing to say, “She’s just being a duck; that’s her nature,” but not all ducks are that aggressive.

Anyway, let’s have some cuteness on Father’s Day. Here they are near the top of the ducking ramp. (This is about a week and a half ago.)

The ramp was a good idea, and I take credit for it, but the credit for the design, construction, and installation must go to Facilities. Audrey’s brood learned to use it the very first day they entered the pond! They are a smart brood, and also aggressive, for even when they were very small, individual ducklings would chase full-grown mallards. I think that part of Audrey’s aggression is heritable.

Here’s a video by Jean Greenberg—all these videos are hers—showing them climbing the ramp towards Mom. They then form a pile.  This happens nearly every day after at least one meal.

Would you like to see another picture of my kids? Sometimes there are two piles, but never more than that.

Look at this video. At 18 seconds in, the duckling at upper left flaps its tiny wings. They look like penguins when they do that!

A pile o’ ducklings:

A closer view:

They’ve already learned to forage on the land. Listen for quacks, the ducklings’ cheeps, and Audrey’s cluck of contentment.

The bridge between the main pond and the channel is a psychological barrier for young ducks. Here they start to cross it, but then turn back. Beyond lies the wide world, and they shouldn’t leave yet!

And two piles of ducklings:

Finally, sometimes they sleep on the boulders and we have Ducklings on the Rocks.  That sounds to me like a good name for a drink, and I invite readers to suggest a recipe for a libation of that name.

Yesterday I mentioned that a mother mallard and her new brood were spotted in the bushes across the sidewalk from the Oriental Institute—several blocks from the pond. Later I was told they had crossed University Avenue heading east, and my heart sank. As Greg mentioned yesterday, and is well known to duck experts, mothers have a very good sense of direction to the nearest pond or lake, and the ducklings can walk long distances. I hoped against hope that the brood was not making their way to Botany Pond, where Audrey and her brood would surely kill them. My idea was to catch the babies before they got to the Pond and get them rehabbed, for the pond is a site of death given Audrey and her Murderous Ducklings.

On my way home I looked for the ducks, but couldn’t find them. It turned out that they were already making their way to the pond, undoubtedly following the mother. For as soon as I got home and started making dinner, I got an email from a student that some kind of kerfuffle, including duckling carnage, was going on in Botany Pond. I immediately knew what happened.

The mother had led her brood along this path from the Oriental Institute, crossing University Avenue, and walked along the buildings on the north side of the Quad, making a hard right and heading to the pond. Here’s a crude map of their route as best I can judge. The Oriental Institute is across the street at the extreme right, so the mom and babies would have had a walk of between 2 and 3 city blocks.

I immediately grabbed my net and duckling rescue box (cardboard, lined with paper towels, and in the 100° F (38°C) heat ran back to the pond, normally a 10-minute walk. On the way back I ran into a woman walking the other way, who asked me, “Are you going to rescue the ducks?”  She was very worried, having seen the carnage in the pond. (I was told that Audrey had grabbed one of the new ducklings by the neck and flung it ashore, and other babies were getting attacked.) I responded “I’m sure going to try.” She came with me to the pond and turned out to be one of the several rescuers who pitched in to help.

When I got to the pond, there were people everywhere, all horrified by what was going on. Several asked if they could help, and I said “sure”. I went upstairs and got three nets, including a large butterfly net (h/t Marcus Kronforst) and two Drosophila nets, as well as an extra box and a roll of paper towels to dry any rescued ducklings.

It turned out there were ten babies, and Audrey and her own ducklings were going after them like gangbusters. The new ones would surely all suffer a horrible death, and I didn’t hesitate: I decided to rescue them if I could (removing them from mother), and take them to rehab.

A guy and a girl both volunteered to go into the pond to get them, and, as I now am recovering from three successive cases of swimmer’s itch from three rescues (one nearly gone, one in full bloom, and one just starting), I told them. “You can go in only if you know the possible consequences.” And I told them about swimmer’s itch and the muddy pond bottom.

They didn’t hesitate a minute. While I rescued the injured duck, floating on the water but still alive (I don’t think he’ll make it), the pair of volunteers grabbed a net and went into the pond. The guy stripped to his skivvies and I carried his clothes back to safety on the plaza, while the woman, wearing shorts, just waded in with a fly net.

And one by one, we set up a Duck Rescue Team. The two in the water went for the other 9 ducklings, one at a time.  Three women on the bank set up two boxes for the ducklings, both lined with paper towels. And I gave them another roll to dry off the caught babies.

And so, over about a half hour, the two in the water managed to collect every one of the other nine.  The babies were hot, wet, and exhausted, and some, caught against the bottom, were covered with mud (I rinsed them clean). As each duckling was caught, I ran around the pond to retrieve it from the net and run it over to the Duck Dryers and Duck Boxers. This is one time I didn’t have to go into the water, which was fine as I was about 4-5 decades older than the two volunteers!

I have to say that everyone was extremely helpful, taking care of the babies, pointing out loose ones, and gently drying the caught ducklings as per my instructions and placing them in the boxes. The group of onlookers around the pond, once informed about why we were doing this, were elated at every capture, and so was our team.

In the end, we got all ten, though the injured one looked to be in bad shape.  I took a quick picture and then, with the help of one of the Duck Dryers, I immediately drove them the few blocks to the Chicago Bird Collision Monitor (CBCM) lady, who agreed to take them in and get them rehabbed at Willowbrook Wildlife Sanctuary.

As you can imagine, I had no time for videos or movies; getting those babies before they were killed was priority #1.  They were put in one box, and appeared to be in good shape but were exhausted after their long walk in the head, the attacks they suffered, and then being chased (during which they dive underwater). But here they are below, all in a huddle.

Everybody on the impromptu team—a mixture of students, instructors and a poet (the guy who went into the pond)—was delighted. We had captured every baby, though the mother flew away. But they knew, having seen the carnage, that we were doing the right thing.  Only I felt a bit low, for I HATE splitting up broods and going through the trauma of attacked babies and freaked-out mothers. I wouldn’t do this if the broods could coexist, so I watched the pond for a short while before we did any rescuing, just to see if it were possible Audrey’s brood could get along with the new one. No dice: she kept attacking the new brood, and so did Audrey’s own ducklings, who have obviously been trained to go after strangers.  We had to do a rescue.

I suspect that nearly all of these will live, though I’ll never know. All I know is that Willowbrook and its rehabbers do a terrific job getting a newborn ducklings through to becoming mighty mallards, and I thank the volunteers and the hospitable Dorothy from CBCM, who takes in our rescues.

I wish I could be happier, knowing that a team of strangers came together to save lives, but I’m still freaked out by this. And there may be one more brood to come, as a nest was spotted on a nearby building.

By the way, I did not get the name of the woman who went into the water. If you are her, or know her, please have her contact me so I can thank her properly and send her a photo of the lives she helped save:

h/t: Maxine, Justin, Alia, and several other people whose names I didn’t get.

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.