A couple days ago, the first thing I did was look out the bedroom window to see if there were any ducklings out there. I had seen some the day before, but I was astonished to actually see them again, on the driveway, glowing and backlit from the morning sun! What a great way to start the day!
You have to imagine the glowing. I’ll never get a photo of that.
They live next door, to the south. I can see them from my deck, and from the window right next to my desk. I can hear the peeping, too!
There is a little ball of ducklings in the very center of this photo.
I’ve never actually seen ducklings in that little pond before this year. Maybe that’s because their cat is now gone.
Decisions, decisions.
Dobby’s little stream drops into a culvert, goes under my driveway, and into the little pond. There is a hole under the fence where the culvert dumps out. There is a little slope at one side that ducklings can negotiate. They don’t have to jump.
The ducklings hesitate at the drop-off at the edge.
Sometimes they come over to play in my little waterfall and look for bugs in the quagmire next to my driveway.
Heading around the fence this time.
When I saw them glowing, they were leaving my duckling playground, heading home the long way around the fence. There is pretty good cover that direction, even though they have to go near the street. It’s a dead end with hardly any traffic.
There are plenty of puddles to play in between here and there.
I feed the mom all year long, so she doesn’t mind me following her around. We’re good friends.
Almost home
I have been tossing out cracked corn for her. The ducklings prefer bugs, but there’s not a whole lot I can do about that.
They have trouble getting over that curb!
Their little legs go pretty fast, but they aren’t so good at jumping! They’ll grow big enough to hop that curb by next week.
Home sweet home!
The neighbors are helping to watch out for them, too.
Ducklings in the pond next door to the NORTH, too!
If that isn’t enough cuteness, there are ducklings on the big pond to my immediate north, too! I was seeing ducklings all the time there, and then I noticed that there were two moms, two broods! I’m tossing cracked corn over the fence that direction, too.
Ducklings on the north pond, viewed from my aviary.
This is the view that my tomcats have. Kitty Hawk and Grover are pretty interested, so I won’t be letting them out at all for a while. I relocated a wild turtle from the street to this pond last summer, but I haven’t seen him this spring.
Sometimes they just look like this, under mama’s wings.
In the video, you can see three dads to the far left, watching over a mom with babies. The property next door has nearly 10 acres of wetlands, so there could be more than two broods there.
One last look.
Stacy's Funny Farm 