Ducklings

Here it the only photo I've managed to get of "our" duck on her nest. I'm calling her Daisy. Our driveway is the upper right portion of the photo. Our front door is just to the left of the stone pillar she is sitting next to.

Daisy is a Muscovy duck that lives in the pond across the street from our house. She showed up in our front yard early in March and spent about 10 days laying her eggs. Once she had produced 14 eggs she started sitting on her nest. She spent most of the day on the nest, only leaving occasionally to eat and stretch her wings. We put out a pan of water for her so she could get fresh water within a few feet of her nest. I'm hoping the bits of dirt we found in the water were from her although we never saw her near the water.

This may be me feeling very anthropomorphic about Daisy duck but I think she had her own support group available. There were a group of four other ducks who would come and sit in our front garden daily. They were near Daisy's nest but did not come too close nor did they seem to interfere in any way. Daisy seemed unconcerned about them being there and would wander off with them when she took her rest time off the nest.

Most ducks sit their nests for about 25 days. Muscovy ducks sit longer - nearly 10 days longer. Daisy duck started sitting her nest towards the end of March. The photo above was taken on April 29th when the eggs were hatching.

Our first indication that something was happening was Daisy kicking empty shells out of her nest. First one, then a couple more. By the time we went to bed that night she had kicked 4 or 5 shells out. When we got up the next morning she was gone. There were 14 broken eggs shells still there but Daisy and the ducklings were long gone.

We saw Daisy again a couple of days later down by the pond. She had 9 ducklings with her at that point and the ducklings were already considerably larger than when they hatched. We spotted her again a couple of weeks later and she had 5 ducklings with her. We have not seen her since. The ducklings should be full grown by 6 to 9 weeks old and it's about 6 weeks right now.

When we moved into this house, I was concerned about snakes. I know there are snakes in the area since residents post photos of them but we have never seen any. It does make a nice change from Ron having to check the back yard for snakes before we let the dogs out after dark out in Cat Spring. It never occurred to me I might have a duck sitting her nest in my front garden. It's been wonderful to watch!