Yesterday I planned a full day of reading and writing for a project I’m working on, but was interrupted three times for duckling rescues, so in terms of “professional” work, I got nothing done. In terms of waterfowl work, I—with the help of others—did rescue eight stranded ducklings who would otherwise have died.  I suppose that’s a fair trade-off, but I really hope these rescues end: they do save lives, but they’re hard on the mother ducks, the ducklings, and on me.  Here are the three rescues.

RESCUE 1.  Around 11 a.m. I saw on the PondCam that a person was standing in the “wildlife area” where nobody is supposed to be. I wandered down to the Pond and found a young man staring fixedly at a spot in the pond—and there was a young (1-3 days old) duckling, paddling along by itself.

The guy, whose name was Arjun Dhar, told me he had found it wandering in the quad and had put it in the pond, hoping that some female would adopt it. Well, that’s a nice thought, but it wouldn’t work for any number of reasons, one being that there were no hens with babies in the pond.  Arjun said that now he wanted to rescue it and take it home to raise. That, too, involves formidable difficulties, and it would be better to take it to rehab. I told him to wait there, keep her eye on the baby, and I’d be right back.

I quickly returned with two nets and a “duck box”, a small box lined with soft paper towels in which to sequester rescues.  It was not that hard to net the baby, and I drove Arjun with me to the rehab volunteer, who lives nearby. Here’s Arajun, showing off the duckling after we scooped it out of the pond. He himself had worked at Lincoln Park Zoo and kept a huge collection of reptiles in his home, including a monitor lizard and a python. I hope to see this fellow animal lover around the pond.

I cuddled it for a second before taking it to rehab:

Fortuitously, there were two other volunteers at the rehabber’s house—the very two who captured Vashti’s babies a few days before—making a run to Willowbrook with a load of injured or orphaned wildlife. The rehab woman put the duckling in a paper back and off it went.  The car was also carrying a bald eagle, who had been in a tree the night before when, during the fierce storms over Chicago, the tree was struck by lightning. The eagle was not in good shape and apparently had a wound in the eye. When I asked the drivers if it would survive, they said they didn’t know. Here’s the poor thing:

RESCUE 2, around 12:30.  Right when I returned from the rehab woman, I saw a knot of people around the channel in the Pond, looking at a narrow spot between two rows of rocks by the drain. In that channel was another orphan duckling, and so I had to get my net and procure it, too, with the help of a member of our Department who sometimes helps Team Duck.  This duckling was diving each time I went for it, surfacing at some random locality.  I knew I could get it if it stayed in the narrow gap between the rocks, and when it dived I gently swept the ground under the water. Sure enough, I came up with a thoroughly wet and thoroughly muddy duckling.  I took it up to my office, dried it off, put it on my chest to warm up, and then put it in another small duck box that I placed next to a space heater. The poor thing was traumatized and not too vigorous, and I was afraid it would die.  But it didn’t.  Here it is on my desk and then on my chest:

I am dishevelled and unshaven; the duck business takes a lot out of you. You can see it’s still wet, but it dried quickly with paper towels and heat (hypothermia is a danger):

When I was catching that duckling, a lady told me that there was an entire brood wandering around the Quad with its mom. I said that I couldn’t go roaming the entire Quad trying to find it, as I was harried. But eventually someone contacted me about it, which led to the next rescue.  Before I recount that one, I have a theory, which is mine.  Rescue #1 probably involved a duckling fron the Quad brood, as the woman who put it in the pond found it there. And rescue #2 may well have been the leftover duckling from Vashti’s brood. I was told that they had recovered seven, for seven had hatched, but I found out when I met the rehabbers earlier that they missed one and got only six. The wet, muddy duckling was, I suspect, the one that was left behind.

On to. . .

Rescue 3. I was settled in my office with the duckling in a box at my feet, getting plenty warm from the space heater. I wss about to get to work when suddenly I got an email from a grad student, time-stamped 2:09 pm.:

Dear Dr. Coyne,

No phone number was given, so I emailed Jenks to call me, which he did immediately. This time there was a whole brood far from water.  The choices were to herd them to Botany Pond, where they’d be driven out by the aggressive drake still here, or capture the entire family for removal to a rehab facility or a distant pond.  I had never captured a hen before, so I equipped myself with two nets and two duck boxes, with a big one for mom. I knew that there was little chance of catching the hen, but I also knew that if left alone, the whole brood would die. I decided to do what I could to capture the family; and if I couldn’t get mom, I’d take the babies to rehab.

I went over to Cobb Hall and met Jenks and his girlfriend Niyati, who was keeping watch on the brood. You can see them below: mom and six babies, walking around in the bushes. The mother had a very slight limp, but she waddled like all ducks, and Jenks mistook some of that waddling for limping.

I watched them for a while, and decided to get the babies, who were peeping, and put them in a box, knowing that mom would stay near the peeping and hoping I could catch her with my big net:

Photo by Jenks and Niyati (I cropped it).

Two very short videos taken by Jenks Hehmeyer and Niyati Jain, who both turned out to be biology grad students. Lovely and helpful people.

The mother did go near the box, which I put in an interior corner of the building to make capturing her easier. I have to admit that I had no idea how to handle a full-grown hen, but a CBCM (Chicago Bird Collision Monitor) volunteer told me to put it in a big box and cover it with a towel.  I had a big box but no towel.

At any rate, capturing the mother was futile.  I would think I had her cornered, and she’d fly straight up and around me.  I must have tried four or five times, and each time the mother would get more freaked out and wouldn’t come too close to the box.  It wss hot, the ducklings in the box were peeping (the mother pecked my leg from behind when I was gathering them), so I decided to take them to rehab, too. The stress-out orphan was still in my office by the space heater, and, returning to the lab to add the singleton to the six, I was delighted to see that that duckling had perked up, had pooped, was peeping, and was much more vigorous. They were on their way to rehab:

Here is the box o’ ducklings from rescue #3 before I added the one from the second rescue to the batch. They were all in good shape and very vigorous.

So that was the last rescue. I made a final foray around the Pond to see if there were any ducklings left behind (the motto of Team Duck is “no duckling left behind”), and then drove the box of seven back to the rehab lady who lives nearby.

After that I washed off my nets and tidied up, and then, too tired to finish the Hili dialogues, I drove home. (I almost always walk home, but had the car because I had gone shopping the day before.. That made driving the babies to the rescue liaison lady much easier.)

The upshot, again: three rescues, eight babies caught. I do hope they do well at the rehab facility, which I think is the DuPage Wildlife Conservation Center. I’m told the survivorship of orphaned ducklings there is over 90%—much higher than the survivorship of any of these ducklings, which would be zero.

I should be happy about this but I was psychologically debilitated. I am not a resilient person and always tend to look on the dark side, so the quacking of the bereft mother, the peeping of the babies, and the stress involved in trying to net orphan ducklings in the pond had taken its toll. I’m not asking for pity, but only recounting that three rescues in one day is stressful and fatiguing, aeven when those these three rescues were, physically, a piece of cake.

I went home, lay down on my bed and sometime later wandered to the kitchen to get dinner.  This morning I wandered down to the Pond again, fearful I’d find another orphan. There weren’t any, but there was the aggressive drake, whose wife, I think, is the second hen who produced a brood in the pond—a brood that disappeared on the same day it came down.  She flew down to the pond from the windowsill when I was feeding the drake, so I suspect that she, like Vashti, is re-nesting.  If so, that could be good, as the only ducks in the pond now are her aggressive drake and herself, so there’s nobody to go after a new brood. (Fingers crossed!)

Perhaps we’ll have a viable brood of ducklings after all.  If that is the case, we can expect to see it around July 10.  That’s still a good time for ducklings as it takes them only eight weeks to get to the fledging stage. Stay tuned!

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.