Baby Ducks are alive and well

I will try to get a picture but I have seen them twice now on the pond on the 18th hole at Belmont. At this time there are 5 little ducklings so it seems that the survival rate is low. We started with 10 eggs, 8 hatched and now there are just 5 babies. Not very good odds.

Looking for Baby Ducks

This morning my duck nest was unattended and there were only 2 eggs in it. Last night after dinner the mama duck was still sitting on the nest so I am not sure what happen over the course of the past 12 hours. I later found 8 of the egg shells about 10 feet away from the nest in the backyard. They are all in approximately the same area and appear to look more like something broke out of the egg rather than into it. So I am hopeful that the ducks were hatched and lead off to the pond or creeks around our house. I will be on the watch today. I am sad that I did not get to see the ducks hatch but hope they are safe now.

Memorial Day 2009

"Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things."

Remebering everyone today.

Practice pictures

We are in Fort Myers, Florida this week. Steve is working and I am practicing on my new camera. Today I went for a walk at the Six Mile Cypress Slough Preserve. We have passed the sign to this public area for years and I often thought of stopping but never got around to it. This was perfect today. It is almost like a rain forest in Florida. There is more than a mile of board walk around three or four lakes. Each area is marked. There is a guided tour on Wednesdays but it was conducted much earlier than I arrived. I walked around twice and saw different things both times.I took lots of pictures on different settings so this afternoon I have been trying to determine what worked well and what didn't work. There are so many settings but I am starting with shutter speeds,ISO settings, and F-stop settings. All of these pictures were taken at the preserve. As I preview this post the blog graphics are doing justice to the quality of the pictures. I am going to have to figure out why.

Still find a quote

Occasionally I still read a quote that needs posting.

“If ever there is tomorrow when we're not together there is something you must always remember, you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we're apart I'll always be with you.”

~Winnie the Pooh

The Eggs are still there

We checked last night as soon as we got home and although the nest was unattended there were 10 eggs. This morning mama mallard was sitting on her clutch again so I guess we continue with the countdown.

It is a ducky spring though because yesterday Jessica send me an email about the "Fox Ducks". It seems at the Fox headquarters in LA a mother duck has made a home for her young brood. Here is part of her email to me.

We have ducks on the fox lot! They were born 2 weeks ago and we are
taking shifts to babysit on the weekends to keep them safe from the
crows. We originally had 9 ducklings but the crows already got 3 so
we're down to six. It's a really big deal too! It's going to be on the
news tonight and there are a few Hollywood bloggers that have written
about the "fox ducks".

Here is her picture of the LA ducks.

Travel Day

I am sitting in the Phoenix airport waiting for our return flight. The storms in the midwest may be causing a bit of a delay because they have moved our flight back by 30minutes. Thank goodness I am sitting by an electrical outlet and there is free WI FI in the airport. The week has passed so quickly. Steve's work went well and we really enjoyed staying with Sarge and Sue in their new condo in Grayhawk. We played golf all 5 days. I think that may be a record for me. It was suppose to be 2 days of golf, a day off, and 2 more days. But we visited the Scottsdale TPC pro shop and found they were offering special off season rates and suddenly we were scheduled for golf on Sunday too. The TPC is a great course and it was fun but I think we were all ready to put the clubs away today. My birthday was fun. Steve had listened to my request and I was surprised because it was a much better camera than I expected. I will be studying the manual and learning about all of the functions for some time. I learned the quick point and shoot so we could take some pictures here but I am sure the quality will improve as I become more expert. One of the features we did get to experiment with is the continuous shutter function which allows you to take several pictures, one right after the other. The guys were anxious to see their golf swing in freeze frame action. These pictures were taken on the range before our game on Tuesday. Clearly Sue is the most photogenic.

Tomorrow is back to reality but I am anxious to see how the ducks and robins have been doing. Hopefully I will be able to post some pictures of them.

Quick Update

Happy Birthday Linda, Happy Mothers Day all Mothers and we are having a wonderful vacation. Home tomorrow so expect a long update but here's a desert picture from my new birthday present camera.

Wednesday Day 4

Last night I saw my Duck off the nest and walking around the yard so I thought it might be interesting to show you what the nest looks like now. She has almost completely covered the eggs with a "down blanket". At times it is hard to distinguish if she is sitting on the nest or not because the feathers look so much like she does. When she is sitting on the nest she seems to flatten herself out and scrunch her head down so it has the same appearance as the feather covering. She seems comfortable with me moving around the yard as I was out most of yesterday finishing my plantings and yard work. She will receive much less attention from Mike while we are away.

My other discovery is the robin nest in the other burning bush on the back of our house. I found it this last week when the robin flew out of the bush as I was weeding under it. It is very well concealed but the robin does seem to be flying out every time I walk by. It has been a great way to get my heart rate up without any exercise. Last night after taking the picture of the duck nest the robin flew out and so I stuck the camera in and got a shot of her egg too.

The countdown begins

It would appear my duck is finished laying eggs and is ready to be a mother. She started sitting on the nest yesterday and didn't leave it today even as I walked by several times while I was working in the yard. So we will count yesterday as Day 1 and today as Day 2. That will make counting a 28 day incubation pretty easy. Ugh... May 29th should be birth day.

Count them ...NINE

And she is still leaving the nest and not sitting on it regularly. I have noticed that she is putting more feathers into it though. Never thought about the expression "feathering your nest" to mean getting it ready to sit on for 28 days but it makes sense. My limited research tells me she will not leave the nest much at all after she is finished laying. Can you imagine being the size of a duck and carrying these nine eggs around?
Here's some of my research:

" Ma Mallard typically lays one egg per day until she has accumulated a full clutch. Early in the nesting season, a full clutch averages 12 eggs. Hens that lose the first nest will commonly nest a second (and even third or fourth) time later in the summer; these "renesting" hens generally lay fewer eggs, commonly 8-10. The first few eggs are laid in a shallow "scrape" in the ground. As laying progresses, Ma will add grass, twigs, and copious amounts of her own down to the nest, resulting in a well insulated and surprisingly well camouflaged nest bowl.
During the laying period, Ma visits the nest for only about one hour per day. While there she lays an egg and works on nest construction. Don't be concerned if she skips a day. She does not incubate the eggs during the laying stage. Because no embryo development has occurred, weather conditions in her absence generally have very little effect on the clutch. An exception is a hard freeze, which may kill the embryos if it occurs before the hen has insulated the nest. Once she has constructed a nest bowl, she will cover the eggs with nest material whenever she voluntarily leaves the nest. This behavior makes the nest less obvious to predators, and protects the eggs from temperature extremes.
Incubation begins after the clutch is complete, and typically lasts for about 25-29 days. During this period she will usually cover the nest and go off to feed for about an hour each morning and afternoon. As hatch date approaches, she will begin to feign injury if she is disturbed. This behavior evolved to lead predators away from the nest...once she is a safe distance from the nest, her "broken wing" will miraculously mend, and she will return to the nest as soon as the danger has passed. This behavior is fun to watch, but be aware that she is risking real injury in the process.
Because no incubation occurred during the laying stage, all viable eggs will hatch within 12-24 hours of one another. After a short period of brooding the ducklings at the nest, Ma will lead the gang off to her chosen wetland. This may be up to 3 miles away, so don't be surprised if you don't see "your" brood on the pond right behind your house...she will take them to where she has found the best source of aquatic invertebrates to feed them. Not uncommonly, one or more unhatched eggs will remain in the nest bowl. Some of these are infertile; others are "addled" (eggs in which a partially developed embryo died during incubation). Discard the leftover eggs, but do it carefully; gas buildup in an addled egg can cause it to explode when handled, and the results are not appetizing.
By the way…if you are wondering about Pa Mallard, he's off looking for an unattended female during most of this. He and Ma stayed together during selection of the nest site and the laying process, but as Ma began to leave him for long periods during incubation, he gradually lost interest and flew the coop. Not politically correct, but that's nature for you.