{"id":39183,"date":"2025-06-17T03:08:07","date_gmt":"2025-06-17T07:08:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/?p=39183"},"modified":"2025-06-17T03:08:07","modified_gmt":"2025-06-17T07:08:07","slug":"just-before-dark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2025\/06\/just-before-dark\/","title":{"rendered":"Just before dark"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s now this scattered occasion when we see a mother wood duck (<em>Aix sponsa<\/em>) visit with her brood, and it&#8217;s routinely been at a time when I&#8217;m unprepared<strong>;<\/strong> this is because they can see us easily even when we&#8217;re in the house watching out the windows, which are too distorting to actually shoot through. The options are, <em>a)<\/em> be outside but someplace that won&#8217;t spook them (next to impossible,) or <em>b)<\/em> be in the upstairs bathroom with the window <em>and<\/em> screen open so it won&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding:56.25% 0 0 0;position:relative;\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/1093908209?badge=0&amp;autopause=0&amp;player_id=0&amp;app_id=58479\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; web-share\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;\" title=\"A wood duck brood visits at dusk\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><script src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/api\/player.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>What this means, I believe, is that we have seen at least three broods on the pond &#8211; the <a href=\"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2025\/04\/blameless\/\" target=\"_blank\">first one of ten<\/a>, the <a href=\"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2025\/06\/estate-find-xxiii\/\" target=\"_blank\">second one of five<\/a>, 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&#8217;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 <em>two<\/em> broods of five. We are waiting to see if this eventually proves true.<\/p>\n<p>Nevertheless, this brood of twelve is\/are semi-regular visitors, just requiring both preparation and attentiveness to spot, and we&#8217;re both marveling that she actually hatched this many. As I said in the video, I don&#8217;t think they ever adopt the orphaned young of another mother &#8211; it&#8217;s genetic competition, after all, and plenty of species take specific actions to avoid that &#8211; to say nothing of the fact that they&#8217;re all the same size. And further proof<strong>:<\/strong> 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 <em>further<\/em> 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&#8217;ve been decimating the yellow cow lilies on the pond. However, it wasn&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/FluffPile.jpg\" alt=\"mother wood duck Aix sponsa on Turtle Island with at least nine of her brood of ducklings\" width=\"750\" height=\"586\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-39184\" \/><br clear=\"all\"\/><em>Yes<\/em>, there are only nine there, but we can&#8217;t see her other side, and it&#8217;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&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s now this scattered occasion when we see a mother wood duck (Aix sponsa) visit with her brood, and it&#8217;s routinely been at a time when I&#8217;m unprepared; this is because they can see us easily even when we&#8217;re in the house watching out the windows, which are too distorting to actually shoot through. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3,3809],"tags":[4948,7742,6785,7176,8165,993,8058,8006,4947],"class_list":["post-39183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-photo","category-video","tag-aix-sponsa","tag-brood","tag-ducklings","tag-dusk","tag-enough-for-everyone","tag-night-photography","tag-roost-spot","tag-turtle-island","tag-wood-duck"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39183\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}