Saw my first baby ducks yesterday

[BLACKJACK]

Was sitting on the deck at the end of a long day, having a cold one, watching the martins, orioles, geese, and other birds, when I saw a duck with a bunch of little 'dots' swimming along the shoreline. Got the spotting scope out, it was a hen wood duck with about 10-12 little ones. Nice to see, especially since I have about 30 wood duck houses out.

[TylerS]

Very cool! I saw a bunch of gosslings this weekend around Fergus Falls. That time of year I guess.

[ChuckN]

Me too, saw my first wood duck hen with a bunch of ducklings for the first time a few days ago.

I had a few hens in houses around April 1. It is/was an early spring!

[Gordie]

Me three.

On my way home from the doctors I drove by a small ditch that holds water most years and one hen mallard had a brood of 8-9 maybe even ten ducklings and when I pulled onto my road the pond across from me has a couple nesting pairs of mallards with ducklings also.

I haven't seen those bluebills either and I guess they went north. I was really hopeing they would stick around.

[benbosh]

Walked up on about 7-8 wood duck ducklings sunday afternoon and seen some mallard ducklings this morning on a slough

[B. Amish]

Saw a brood of mallards on may 1st in alexandria. I don't know if i'll ever see an earlier brood in this part of the state.

[Bryce]

Most of the goslings around our area have already started graying. Still had momma woodie sitting in her house this weekend. Didn't check the other box with the merganser. Stinkiest nest box I've ever had and mergansers have used it previously. Must be a first timer. Kept throwing out all the cedar and using down right awayn

[buckpredator]

Ditto on the goslings greying already, right now many are about the size of mallards. Seen my first clutch of mallard ducklings two weeks ago at a park pond in shakopee. So there are many little ones out already, with that being said, i have a hen wood duck that just started incubating yesterday in one of my boxes. Its looking promising though with the sheer numbers of little ones people are reporting.

[Bryce]

Woodie hatched out all but four eggs. Nest had obviously been dumped in by others. 20+ eggs in it. Smelly merganser got her entire clutch out of the box. Think my last count was 14. Hope the heavy rain didn't wreak too much havoc on the youngsters. See guite a few goose broods with low numbers as in 2-4 but they are swimming/feeding right next to normal size hatches.

[Eric Wettschreck]

Every year a couple woodies nest in the trees in my yard. It's cool. Couple years ago we watched mamma jump out of the tree and start tweeting. Pretty soon a bunch of little furballs jumped out, bounced around, mamma rounded them all up and herded them to the wetland area behind my place. That was cool.

This year, so far, I haven't seen her herd them out yet. She's been walking around the backyard a lot lately so I'm thinking it will happen soon. Keeping my eyes open cuz it's really cool to see.

[TheHogSeeker]

Saw two pair of geese swimming with 51 gosslings the other day. Do other geese watch over the gosslings while they go and feed or what?

[Riverratpete]

Anecdotally have been seeing lots of little ducks and geese lately..kinda early, hope to get a double nesting this year

[pike79]

Saw some baby ducks today don't know if they were woodies, mallards or what mama wasn't around.