All the ducks are doing well: the four offspring of Miss Duck are getting larger and have developed visible necks and tails. Yesterday was their “weekiversary,” as they came to the pond on Sunday, July 19.

Miss Duck is taking good care of them. It was wicked hot yesterday, but they survived by immersing themselves in cool water as well as sleeping most of the day. Here are a few snapshots from Sunday, including one video and two turtle snaps.

The lovely Miss Duck.  While I love all hens, she is an exceptionally pretty and graceful one, possessing a long, slender neck:

Head-on shot:

A thriving duckling:

A video of the brood swimming, dunking, and diving after lunch:

And we musn’t forget our four turtles. Miss Duck is afraid of them, pecks at them underwater when she can, and quacks and moves away when they’re swimming nearby.  But when the ducks are on the rocks, the turtles avoid basking there.  I guess they harbor a mild dislike of each other, but there is no real animosity.

Here are three doing “turtle yoga,” stretching out their necks and limbs to catch the sun:

And one of the red-eared sliders. I believe it’s a male based on the long front claws.

I am pleased to report that the Gang of Four (now five days old) have made it with flying colors through another day at Botany Pond. Today they are five days old. They are vigorous, healthy, and have a hearty appetite, as does Miss Duck, their watchful mother.  She’s proving to be an excellent mom, and I like to think that they’re all content, if not happy. I have high hopes that they’ll all make it to fledging (mid-September at the earliest).

Here’s a video of the ducklings eating. The big pellets are for Miss Duck, the little ones for the babies. Everyone gets crushed-up mealworms.

More lunching with the family. People love to come by at feeding time. It’s at 1:30 pm today (the last of three feedings), and if you’re one of the women from the Regenstein Library or the Dean of Students’ office, be prompt!

After lunch yesterday, the ducklings, who are quite vigorous, jumped up on a big rock abutting the north end of the Pond. I didn’t think they could make it, but they all did. Miss Duck overlooked them from the pond ledge. Below is a passel of photos as well as two more videos:

Mom stretches a wing and raises a leg:

Babies perching and jockeying for position on the rock.

More:

Babies napping:

Now everybody takes a nap. It lasted nearly an hour before the ducklings decided they’d had enough and jumped into the pond. Miss Duck, of course, had to follow.

When Miss Duck preens, the babies do, too. I was doubtful whether babies imitate the mother, but now I have no doubt that they do.

My degree of anxiety about the new ducklings decreases asymptotically as they age. The first week I get nervous, for they are at their most vulnerable, but as they age over the next several weeks I relax (a bit!) and am never fully complacent until they can fly, which is about two months after they hatch.  They appeared on Sunday morning, which means they hatched on Saturday, so today the four ducklings are four days old.  My first task of the day is to count them.

And they’re doing well: they are plump, lively, and eating well. Their mother, aka Miss Duck, is still being the perfect mom, watching over them and warming them when they’re wet. (It’s a bit chilly today: about 68°F).  Here are the quadruplets getting warmed.

As you read yesterday, I was all happy and hopeful that the new brood from hen mother Margot would thrive and grow in Botany Pond.  Well, once again it was not to be.  Sometime in the morning, only a few hours after they entered the pond, they all disappeared. I had no idea what had happened, but kept watching the pond.

A few hours later, an undergraduate named Gabby, who loves the pond, emailed me that four ducklings were huddled together on a rock in the channel, and one was floundering in the thick algae in the channel.  I ran down to the pond with my net and a “duck box”: a small box lined with old but clean teeshirts which I keep ready to harbor rescued ducklings.

Sure enough, I found five ducklings. Four were standing on the rocks in the channel, completely sodden. Another was nearby, trying to swim through a thick mat of algae and failing.  Two others we later found dead on the rocks in the main pond.

What happened? I think the ducklings simply got mired in the thick algae floating on the pond surface, or dove and surfaced within it, coating themselves with algae and becoming wet (ducklings have no inherent oil in their feathers as they get it from being underneath mom).  All the live ones were completely soaked, and I feared for their lives.

The next six photos are by Gabby, the undergrad who discovered the mishap and emailed me. The first is the duckling mired in algae, which I picked up and dunked underwater to free it from the stuff:

Four completely soaked ducklings:

It was pitiful:

They were so wet that their skin was visible:

These were only one-day-old babies, and I had to get them dry immediately. I put them in a “duck box” and took them to my office, where I had to dry them off. The box was put by a space heater underneath my desk, which keeps them warm and helps them dry off.  This is before drying:

It took me an hour and a half to dry them off. I alternated among the ducklings so I didn’t handle each one for a long time. I used the lab equivalent of Kleenex—Kimwipes—to gently stroke them and blot them. Those who looked poorly I put in the rolled-up tee-shirt, making a pouch to keep them close to my body.

I then left them for an hour, giving them a little shallow dish of water into which I crumbled baby duck food. When I looked again, they were all pretty dry, fluffy, and also vigorous. None of them looked close to death. At 2 p.m., right before the World Cup Game, I drove them to Dorothy, the local representative of the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors, who would keep them until they go to the Willowbrook Wildlife Sanctuary, where they’ll be tended well. I was satisfied that none of them had been fatally soaked.

I saved five but two died before I could get to the Pond. That makes seven, and Margot had nine or ten. I don’t know what happened to the others; I did a sweep of the pond several times and they’d all disappeared.

I blame the algae for this one. Without it, I think the brood would have grown up fine and fledged in September. Nearly the entire bottom of the pond is covered with a thick mat of algae, and much of the surface is, too, which I’ve circled in this photo:

The reason there’s algae is that the sun beats heavily on the pond, facilitating the plant’s growth. If there were trees to shade it (several were removed) or water lilies to float on top (they planted a few in pots, but they are not going to spread as the bottom is gravel), we wouldn’t have this problem.  Every two weeks, at great expense, the University has to pay for two guys to go into the pond and haul up great armfuls of algae, but it’s a losing battle. They can never remove more than a fraction of the growth.

One of the algae-removal guys told me that this was predictable and the University should have known this beforehand; and I think that’s true. Whoever decided to put a gravel bottom on the pond, and then plant a few measly containers of grass and water lilies thinking they’d spread, was completely out of their depth.

I don’t know if they can get rid of the algae and prevent its future growth, but this design error cost the lives of four or five ducklings yesterday, not to mention the separation of Margot from her brood and the great joy that a brood of ducklings brings to the University community. I am angry and very sad at the same time. The three previous broods were either saved and rehabbed (one brood) or walked out of the pond when Mom was harassed by drakes (two broods). That could not be helped, but the algae could have been.  I am powerless to do anything about it, but yesterday marked the end of an annus horribilis for ducks. I’m not looking forward to next year.

The ducklings yesterday before disaster struck: