|
 I have always been a student of nature, particularly animal life. Spring time is always fascinating with the arrival of the new broods and this year was especially educational.
Training dogs takes birds and since I train pointers and labs, I have a variety of birds around including ducks. This year I had a mallard hen who was able to attract a mallard drake who was stopping by. It’s not uncommon for a pair or two of mallards to spend some time in the spring in a few of our training ponds and this year one drake in particular was quite smitten with our hen. The bond between the hen ( who was still in the pen) and the drake grew with each passing day.
Some mornings I would look out and see 2 or 3 drakes and maybe a hen – it was as if he was bringing reinforcements to help the free the love of his life. When he would fly away, she would call him back. What a great way to study how ducks really call to each other. He would fly from the pond to the pen, waiting for her to somehow appear by his side. Then he would cruise back to the pond causing her to plead with him to return. At one point he was landing on the roof of the building nearest her pen, desperate for a way into her life.
Finally I was convinced to turn her loose. I was leery of letting her out because of the dogs but she did just fine. The drake was very happy, he finally had his love. But typical of males of some species, he soon was gone.
The hen did what comes naturally: building a nest and hatching ten ducklings. She was a very proud mama, bringing the brood out for all to see. Their daily walks from the pond where they were hatched would take them thru the field the short distance to the upper pond. My daughter and I watched and laughed the first time they went single file down the steep bank to the water. They circled the pond, staying near the edges exploring this new world. It seemed there was always one who would wander a little too far and mama would softly talk to the renegade who would come scurrying along. As though it was the hen’s way of reducing the size of the brood to a manageable size, the walks expanded and every other day there would be one less duckling until she was left with 6 babies.
 One day the ducklings were out walking but there was no mama. We watched them all day but there was no sign of her. The remaining ducklings were scooped up and when they were 8 weeks old the remaining 3 were taken to another pond ¼ mile away on the property. It was a Friday and on Sunday all were still there. When checking on them Monday, there was no sign of them. We had known it was a 50-50 chance they would survive.
On Wednesday I went by the pond they had been hatched at and found that there was one duckling there! Somehow the duck had walked; they were still fuzzy so couldn’t have flown. Without the guidance of the mother, he had navigated his way back to the home pond perhaps dodging predators along the way. I’m not sure if he followed the road or struck off thru the woods but he made it back. I wondered about the others but figured they hadn’t been so lucky. I was wrong because the next day the other two were with the first on the pond. Apparently they had taken a longer route and the other wasn’t interested in waiting around for them.
Over the next few weeks the ducks stayed on the pond and eventually were moving back and forth between the two ponds. They are fully feathered now and we only see them occasionally, but they made it- without the help of their mother proving beyond a doubt in my mind that their survival skills are inherited rather than learned and their navigation skills are far better than any GPS.
|
