It’s now this scattered occasion when we see a mother wood duck (Aix sponsa) visit with her brood, and it’s routinely been at a time when I’m unprepared; this is because they can see us easily even when we’re in the house watching out the windows, which are too distorting to actually shoot through. The options are, a) be outside but someplace that won’t spook them (next to impossible,) or b) be in the upstairs bathroom with the window and screen open so it won’t distort the images. Leaving the screen open means leaving the door closed, because we have The Boogs, and of course it invites bugs. But the other evening, I was prepared, even though she showed up with the sprogs when the light was almost too low to work with.
What this means, I believe, is that we have seen at least three broods on the pond – the first one of ten, the second one of five, and now this one. Except, one of the evenings that we were watching (while I was unable to snag any pics,) there was a suspicion that the five ducklings that we were seeing had gotten larger a lot faster than they should’ve since the last viewing. From personal experience, we know that ducklings can put on weight fast, but this might also mean that there are two broods of five. We are waiting to see if this eventually proves true.
Nevertheless, this brood of twelve is/are semi-regular visitors, just requiring both preparation and attentiveness to spot, and we’re both marveling that she actually hatched this many. As I said in the video, I don’t think they ever adopt the orphaned young of another mother – it’s genetic competition, after all, and plenty of species take specific actions to avoid that – to say nothing of the fact that they’re all the same size. And further proof: as I was getting the outside photos for the previous post, I heard a splash from the pond even though it was nearly 11 PM, and so sidetracked myself further from my goal of snagging some lightning pics (more on that later,) to go down there with the headlamp and take a look, suspecting that I might see one of the beavers, since they’ve been decimating the yellow cow lilies on the pond. However, it wasn’t the beavers, and while the pic that I snagged without the long lens was inadequate, I returned a few hours later and did it right.
Yes, there are only nine there, but we can’t see her other side, and it’s certainly more than five (and the brood of ten should be about adult size by now.) But the clinching proof? They all have her eyes…