babyducksbabyducksbabyducks!!

[icehousebob]

I've been watching the pond daily since ice out. There are three pairs of geese that have a total of 13 young ones. Most of them are now larger than adult Mallards. Yesterday, a Mallard hen came out with ten duck puppies. Since there have been six Mallard drakes, a couple of Mergansers, and eight or ten Woodie drakes on the pond, there must be some hens on nests right now, ready to appear with young ones. Anyone else been spotting young ducks in you areas??

[onlydrakes4me]

Been seeing lots of baby wood ducks and mallards and seeing young geese for 3 weeks allready

[Born2Fish]

Yeah me too. Seen tons of baby geese. Have seen quite a few ducks too lately also.

[BLACKJACK]

Walked out to one of my ponds last night with the dogs with the intention of throwing some dummies for them. Came around the corner and there was a batch of young mallards, a couple weeks old. Mama and the babies all dove under the water and swam toward the cattails, all I saw was a few heads come up, like periscopes on a submarine, then they were gone into the cattails. I started throwing dummies and the hen came out of the cattails and started swimming toward my dogs that were swimming and retrieving dummies. Ok, ok so I moved to a different pond about 50 yards away - and the hen flew over and still harrassed my dogs when they were swimming. Finally she flew back to the original pond. Nature at work.

Been checking a few of my wood duck houses, most have hatched out. But I haven't seen the duckies, they have a way of hiding around the edges.

[Jameson]

I very accidentally bumped a hen mallard of her nest on May 13th. Went back yesterday June 10th and the nest was empty, no feathers, no egg shells, just empty. Hope she and her little ones made it to the neighbors pond.

While it's obviously good not to have a pile of feathers at the nest site, should their be any egg shells? Is their any other signs I can look for to see if she was successful?

[B. Amish]

you probably should've seen down feathers and eggshells if the nest hatched. if both were absent, it sounds like maybe something got to the eggs when she was still laying them and not incubating yet.

[icehousebob]

Just this evening, a Woodie hen made an appearance on the pond with ten tiny little ones. She kicked some serious butt on two other hens that tried to get close to her brood. It took me awhile to count them, the way they skitter around. I still think there might be more on the way,hopefully. The Mallard hen still has all ten of her pups. She's a very busy mom.

[icehousebob]

Another Mallard hen showed up this afternoon with seven new duck babies. This backyard pond is crawling with critters. It seems like Kvack, the celtic god of waterfowl, has smiled on us. The older young geese are getting hard to tell from the parents. Looks good for this fall.