Why is it that it seems (to me anyway) to be okay to write “XXIII” but not “XXVIII,” instead making me think it looks cleaner to write “XXIIX”? I mean sure, it’s a digit less, but doesn’t it just look better? Yet I don’t think writing “XXIIV” works the same way…
Or we could just stop pretending that it’s somehow classier to use Roman numerals in the first place. There’s that.
Slightly repetitive one here, depending on how you look at it. But sitting in my office one afternoon and hearing a ruckus from the pond, I went out back and made a new discovery, though it wasn’t until the next day that I was able to get adequate photos of it. Them. Whatever.
Yep, we have another brood of wood ducklings (Aix sponsa) to watch, and curiously, the mother seems to prefer keeping them on either the main pond or the upper pond, rather than just bringing them in for a couple of nights like the previous brood. And yes, I’m quite sure this isn’t the previous brood, since those ducklings should be a lot bigger than this by now.
As you can see, this session was occurring in late afternoon just before the sun disappeared behind the trees, still about 45 minutes before sunset, but this still mean the light wasn’t ideal. Although I did catch the young as they made a pass through a patch of bright sunlight, which is rare – wood ducks are very good about staying in shadow whenever possible.
The question is, is this the brood of the female that I caught peeking from the nest box? And the answer is, there’s no way I could tell for sure, but I’m leaning away from it; those young should have been out of the nest, if they did indeed leave in the few days that I was staking it out, for better than two weeks now, and I think they would have been bigger than this.
While I never did discover what the ruckus was about the first day, it replayed almost exactly while I was doing these photos, and near as I can tell, the resident green heron (Butorides virescens) got quite upset to find the mama and ducklings nearby and protested it loudly – you can just see the feathers standing up in indignation. Why this might be, I cannot say – they don’t even share a food source, and the heron and adult wood duck are roughly the same size and pose no threat to each other. It might also have been that they both were responding to some other threat, though I saw nothing else either time.
For her part, the mother duck was also kicking up a fuss, leading her young off to other locations while crying plaintively in their manner, though this may also have been only a signal to the young to stay close and keep their eyes open. Just thinking about it now, I realize I may not have any decent recordings of the various wood duck calls, which do not sound like ducks – I’ll try to remedy that soon (the recording, I mean, not trying to get them to sound like other ducks…)
Twice now, I’ve also witnessed the mother bringing her ducklings into the yard after the corn that we distribute, even though they probably cannot handle corn themselves at this point – I was unsuccessful at photos either time, since they’re still wood ducks and incredibly wary of people, and she led her brood to the water as soon as I slipped out the door with the camera. We’ll be trying to get the ducklings something more appropriate to nosh on very soon, though right now it’s a matter of timing to try and prevent it all from being consumed by other critters before she and her brood find it.
This is the sharpest I’ve managed of her and the ducklings so far, and of course the ducklings are mostly obscured – I’ll be working on it. But for now, we’re pleased to see another brood staying so close by, and hope it remains this way for a bit. The geese and geeseling have totally stopped visiting, for reasons unknown, and right now just a male mallard, only occasionally accompanied by a female, make semi-regular visits, though the wood ducks are still fairly routine morning tourists. It’s been interesting watching their habits, not knowing the reasons or if this is typical or not.