Some years when the ice first comes off my pond, I will get some visiting ducks that might hang around for a few days as the migrate to their summer nesting sites. This year I didn’t spot extras passing through like these Blue-winged Teals which did visit a couple years in the past.
Visiting Blue-winged Teals
Yesterday evening I spotted a male wood duck by my pond, even though the pond was covered with ice. This morning there was five male and three females wood ducks and one of the males was acting like an icebreaker vessel as it jumped on the ice several times to create a path in the ice. The rain today helped melt some of the ice, giving the ducks more room to swim around.
Wood Ducks Return
Ducks might like water but I’m not too sure they liked this cold, damp day and they might be wishing for sunny warm days especially when their eggs hatch and the little ducklings are scooting around on the water.
Cold Duck
As I approached the pond today while mowing, I noticed some baby ducks scooting across the water and I thought the wood ducks had hatched. So I grabbed my camera but by the time I came back, they were gone so I started mowing again. Eventually I saw them heading down the path to the area I hadn’t mowed yet. After a closer look, I discovered it was the mallard and her babies and not the wood ducks yet.
New Batch of Ducks
Watch the baby mallard ducks follow mom around the pond.
When I was trying to photograph the rainbow last evening, I scared off three ducks on my pond but I didn’t realize one of the females was still in the nest box until I got too close to her. She flew out of the nesting box and waited on the edge of the pond until I left the area. I wonder if I will spot when the babies leave the nest.
Waiting Female Wood Duck
Maybe the ducks were the only critters who enjoyed last week’s wet weather. I just know that I am looking forward to some sunshine for a few days.
Duck Enjoying the Water
Ducks love water so they should like the today’s rainy weather. There are many variety of ducks, even ones with a bad morning hairdo! But the bad hairdo on the White Crested duck is caused by a genetic mutation of the skull. Ducks with this mutation are born with a gap in their skull, which is filled with fatty tissue and from this tissue, the feathers sprouts.
People have continued to breed for this mutation, as early as 1600 as seen in paintings, but if a pair crested ducks are breed to each other, then about a quarter of the embryos to die in the shell because a double dose of the crested gene will cause the duckling’s brain to develop improperly outside of the skull. Half the offspring will be crested and the remaining quarter will be non-crested. When breeding a crested duck with a non-crested duck, half will be crested and the other half non-crested, with no lethal allele, although the crests are smaller than when breeding two crested ducks.
White Crested Duck
The lawn still has spots of standing water, but these ducks don’t mind the water as they can move faster in the water than walking.
Baby Ducks Following Mom
Short video of the ducks.
The duck would need ice skates to be on the pond this week or keep spinning in circles to prevent the ice from forming.
Swimming Duck
This female Common Mergansers looks like she is scared of something and hiding like my cat yesterday in the thunderstorm, but instead the duck is looking for fish and in a blink of an eye, she is gone under the water. Common Mergansers are sometimes called sawbills, fish ducks, or goosanders. The word “merganser” comes from the Latin and roughly translates to “plunging goose”, which is a good name for this very large and often submerged duck.
Common Merganser
