NOT what I expected to wake up to this morning...

[AlanThePig]

Some of you might recall we have a rather large pond in our garden. On it we have a pair of ducks. First day of lockdown appeared ten, beautiful ducklings. They grew up, flew away and that was that until next spring.

Except I woke up to this......
There are ten more (seven in this photo) and I can only assume the warm weather has thoroughly confused her.

I'm now going spend the next few months fretting over bloody wildlife.

@Soubriquet

I would say they died because they didn’t have a devoted duck slave like yours do

Yours have shelter, food and a dh willing to leap out the car and chase off stalking cats

This is true .
They lived on the canal behind a work colleague of DH and appeared a few days after ours. In fairness it's a busy route and there are lots of other birds on there, DH caught up with him in the office yesterday and he said all had gone. Kind of brings me back to the 'am I interfering too much' line of thought though.

Don’t forget their are zander and pike in the canal - they decimate ducklings etc.
You are just balancing up nature and helping to right the wrongs of humans introducing aliens species (zander) into the eco system.

Lovely, lovely thread, OP. Sorry about the little ones that didn't make it.

@Bargebill19

Don’t forget their are zander and pike in the canal - they decimate ducklings etc. You are just balancing up nature and helping to right the wrongs of humans introducing aliens species (zander) into the eco system.

Hmmm fair point that. I've aired my thoughts on alien species before in this thread, though admittedly goldfish wont do too much harm, but wish people would think.

Cute video! 🙂

Hope they are okay after the frost last night.

My dd sadly witnessed a dm duck hit by a car last year. She had a string of babies behind her who about turned and made it to some bushes.
We enlisted some helpers and managed to catch all the ducklings and get them to a farm who took them in. Maybe the canal ones had similar good fortune op.

@Sunnydaysstillhere

My dd sadly witnessed a dm duck hit by a car last year. She had a string of babies behind her who about turned and made it to some bushes. We enlisted some helpers and managed to catch all the ducklings and get them to a farm who took them in. Maybe the canal ones had similar good fortune op.

Oh so sad, but lucky you were there! I'd like to think they are off happily swimming somewhere. In fact, I'll stick with that 😁

Adult DS was here when Egwina did her disappearing act (Covid explanation, his boiler has been broken a week and he needed a shower). He was desperately excited at the idea of being able to take them in and rear them in the bath a bit like Joey in Friends. I think he was a bit disappointed when she came back, though how he planned on capturing seven ducklings on a large pond in the dark I'm still wondering.

Hope they are okay after the frost last night

There was a thick frost here first thing, all spent the night in the duck house, which must be a squeeze at this point, but they are all fine. Weather at lunchtime said milder again towards the weekend so all good.

They have been catching the insects over the pond earlier, scooting around at a million miles an hour snapping at the air. Its so funny to watch.

Thanks for this thread. My DS has struggled with his mental health this year, and during the first lockdown we discovered a family of geese living nearby with their babies. DS went at least once a day to feed them and keep an eye out for them.

You need to provide bigger living accommodations!

You never know if batch number 2 decide to loaf off you for life and refuse to bugger off once fledged

Worrying times here. Weena and Dunc are awol. We went out for tea at 6pm and the babies were alone. Came back at 8 and they were still alone.

Called the local wildlife lady and if they are still alone in the morning we need to catch them and get them to her sanctuary.
Worried sick and probably won’t sleep tonight now. It’s really cold and they are huddled on the platform. No way can I attempt to get to them tonight.

Bloody ducks 😥

They are having a least blast down and at the dog and duck pub.
Fingers crossed they are home for 10 pm.

We’ve just made the funniest discovery.
We have cctv that looks over the pond so rewound it to see why she flew and make sure it was nothing like a predator etc
We’ve reviewed a few days worth now and discovered the little madam goes all night, returning at first light. She’s done this every night for the last week. The only reason we noticed tonight was because we went out, somethings we very rarely do.

Knowing that I’m fairly sure she’ll be back tomorrow now but I can honestly say I’ve never seen a duck go out for the night!!

Incidentally I’ve now had to WhatsApp the lovely local wildlife lady back and apologise that my duck is a floozy and will most likely be back in the morning.

Oh phew. Perhaps she knows lockdown is coming.

😂

How utterly irresponsible of her!!! Letting her man completely lead her astray. They're be another clutch of fertilised eggs at this rate 😱

I can’t believe she leaves them every night. I don’t know if this makes me more or less worried. Difficult to see in the dark but they look like they settle on the platform overnight and don’t move until she gets home. First light they land and the ducklings come racing across to greet her.
It’s the weirdest thing.

@AlanThePig these are so cute!! But on a very random note.. do you live inside a park?! I was visiting my mums hometown (obviously I won’t say where or everyone would potentially know where you live) recently and we took a walk in a large park there and I saw the most beautiful house with the most beautiful garden and huge pond.... your pics look so much like it!!! It’s a dream house! If that does happen to be your house I’m so jealous ❤️ X

We had our first frost here last night... How are your ducks?

I don’t zoo sadly. As this is a 30 day thread I’ll share a pic from the front. This was taken in the spring this year, just before lockdown from just inside the front fence.

It’s a very modern little cul de sac of 15 houses very similar to mine. The houses were built on the farm land where the pond was. I was the lucky one to get it within my land ☺️

If you ever sell up you are going to be vetting the buyers and seeing if you can write wildlife care and nurture liabilities into the deeds 🤣🤦🏼‍♀️

Oh my days, what's up with Duncan and Egwina leaving their poor little babies, just to go out on the lash?!!!!
I really hope they show up first thing in the morning and realise that they can't do that now because of the new lockdown.
Shockingly bad parents!

I’ve realised as I’ve sat here I bet that number eight who vanished overnight probably drowned without her.
I have no duck behaviour to compare this too so don’t know if it’s unusual or not. Maybe she thinks we’re looking after them and feels confident enough to leave them?
Either way we spent half the night researching to see if we could take care of them ourselves and where to buy a shed and heat lamps in an emergency before we concluded that raising them was perhaps a step too far.

She didn’t leave the last clutch I don’t think, it was a bit lighter in the evening in March so we’d have noticed I’m sure. Funny thing was DH was complaining of a racket every morning at half six and thought she was just waking them all up when actually it’s her shouting she’s home 😂

DH and I have both said we’d never move from here unless we really really had to. It’s not the quietest, there is a dual carriageway on the other side of the wood to the right of the photo, but no day is ever the same, be that errant ducks or spotting a water vole flitting across the pond.

Can ducklings drown, without some bastard fish pulling them under? They seem to have to struggle hard to get under water at all when they're learning to dabble in the silt, and bob up as soon as they stop.