Cleaning ducks

We've been thrilled lately with plentiful downpours, cloudbursts, thunderstorms, showers, drizzles, sprinkles, and mists. Over six inches of very welcome precipitation over the past two weeks or so. (I'm sure that only seems like more rain than we've had in the last two years.)

Our Muscovy ducks don't much like the water. You'll find one in a pond only if you've thrown him in there yourself. They don't particularly like the rain either — they'll retreat to the porch to stand under the eaves to stay dry.

But the recent rain has often been at night, when the Muscovies like to be in the (uncovered) pen.



Boy, are those ducks clean!

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Submitted to the Friday Ark.

Poor ducks

When we are away from home and return after dark, the ducks sometimes elect to spend the night on the pond. The next night, they're usually back in the pen, waiting for us to close the door. No harm done.

Recently though, after we came home late several nights in a row, the ducks refused to return to the pen at all. We tried herding them off the pond, but they were having none of that.

Duckie (1, 2) disappeared. If I'd laid bets on which duck might be picked off first, it certainly wouldn't have been Duckie, the flightiest one in the group.

Then Runt disappeared. Then Bluebill. Dagnabbit, we were going to be stuck with only male Runner ducks left, and wouldn't the female Muscovy just love that, come springtime? And why won't those dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks ducks come back to the safety of the pen at night?! You'd think they'd notice their comrades getting nabbed.

Then Runt reappeared. I don't know where she'd been... she didn't look injured. I am guessing that something chased her, and it took her a while to find her way home again. I held out hope for the other two girls for a few days, but it looks like they're not coming back.

I'm not sure what's getting them... coyotes, bobcats, raccoons, or turtles. Or something else our game camera hasn't caught here yet.

I'm going to try tempting them into the pen in the afternoon, with corn. But they have to be in the vicinity of the back yard to see it, and I can't have fed them too much in the morning, or it won't work. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Ms. Muscovy

Ms. Muscovy is the only duck here who flies much. The Indian Runners can't be bothered, Ms. Mallard prefers to waddle, and Mr. Muscovy is too heavy to get off the ground (unless Jasmine is chasing him).

Lately she has learned that on the rim of the dog pen (that serves as their nighttime predator protection), she'll be away from the drakes' loving attentions, yet remain part of the flock. Being part of the flock is pretty important to ducks.

The roof of the workshop is Ms. Muscovy's other favorite place to land.

Fire in the woods

British Soldiers (Cladonia cristatella), my favorite lichen.



Two very small salamanders. Either Southern Red-backed (Plethodon serratus), Southern Zigzag (Plethodon ventralis), or Webster’s (Plethodon websteri).

According to Salamanders in Alabama, they're "easily confused".



These tiny... things... were growing on a limb rotting on the ground. I can't even tell if they are a type of mushroom, slime mold, lichen, or what. Possibly an immature version of Peniophora rufa...?

The whole line there was about the width of a blade of grass. I could definitely use a macro lens. And of course that portable DNA analyzer that they are being so slow to invent.



An easy one, finally: Truckus plasticus.

And there's always this:

The muscovy duck who thinks he's my boyfriend.



He follows me into the woods, if I'm moving slowly enough.

I'll be hunkered down, minding my own business, trying to take a photo of something low to the ground, when I hear a coarse hissing from behind.

That's my cue to stand up fast, unless I'm in the mood to be nibbled, stabbed, and pinched by a duck.

I'm not sure how he carries bread crumbs, but he's always there waiting when we get back home.

I vant to be left alone

Both the Muscovy (above) and the Runner duck had to be chased off their nests. They weren't happy being forced to abandon their eggs, rotten and stinking though they were.

That poor Muscovy. She keeps trying to nest and having no luck. I think the only thing she did wrong this time was to pick the period with the record number of consecutive 100°+ days. She's not much of a weather forecaster I guess.

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Friday Ark.

Duckspeak 101

"Stay away from my nest."

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Last Friday's Ark is here.

More ducks

I had to work the garden hotline yesterday and was exhausted by the time I got home. It was a day full of characters, which was interesting but not exactly relaxing. So, no time for new pictures, but here are a few more of the ducks.



My original description of Duckie's top-knot/crest/pouf is here. Basically it's a skull deformity. (But a cute one.)

Here are some views from other angles. Yes, it's very soft! But the capturing nearly gives her a heart attack, so we don't feel it too often.



I mentioned the other day that male ducks like to grab onto the crest for umm, balance, so she'd lost a few feathers. Here is the other female Runner duck, Runt, who's missing a few feathers herself.



Poor dear. Chickens do this too, by the way. Roosters seem to know their business better, though. It's quickly over. Ducks I've observed in the wild don't mess around either.

Our ducks however... well, maybe they need a how-to video. Boss-duck, and especially Tuxedo, sometimes just walk back and forth across the backs of the female ducks. Up and down, circle around, back up, back down, etc. Quacking the whole time but not really, well, doing anything.

Often the female gets tired of waiting I guess, or tired of being stepped on, and manages to escape. Sometimes they are caught again within a few steps, and the process starts all over again.

I'm not sure if all domestic ducks are this way, or just Indian Runner ducks. Or just ours.

Duckie update

"Well," Hubby said, looking out the window at ducks chasing each other across the yard, "Duckie is definitely a girl."

Oh no, not already.

"Yep. And they're using her topknot to hang on. I think she's missing a few feathers."

Just in the past day or so I'd noticed that Duckie wasn't clinging to Bluebill (Mom duck) any longer. In fact Bluebill made another nest and is sitting on eggs again. So is the female Muscovy, but I think she's already been off the nest too long. She seems to think, especially in the first few days, that it's ok to sit on the nest half the day and then walk about the other half.



In other news, I have a new camera! But in the rush to take pictures before the light faded last night, I didn't adjust any settings, and most of the pictures turned out blurry. (Really, the light had already faded.)

Please let me know if this picture looks too dark on your computer screen. It looks fine on my laptop, but pictures seem darker on our other computer and I'm not sure which one is "normal".

Duckie update

Our broody Indian Runner duck, Bluebill, hatched out one baby the day before Mother's Day. At one day old he was the cutest thing in the world.



Awwww.



Here he is now. Or rather, last week. Still cute, but the awwww factor has mostly been replaced with I can't stop looking at that crazy thing on his head.



When we ordered our ducks from Ideal Hatchery, I noticed the statement, "Crested Fawn and White Runners may possibly be included with your order." None of our ducklings were crested though, so I forgot about it. But one must have carried the gene.

According to the Domestic Waterfowl Club of Great Britain, "The crest is a mutation associated with skull deformities... The crest is formed from a mass of fatty tissue that emerges through a gap in the cranium (skull). From this, feathers grow."

Also fascinating:

The crest gene is an incompletely dominant one. ie, if an chick receives a double dose of the gene - one from each parent (homozygous) it will die in the shell. If only one of the parents passes it on (heterozygous) the resulting hatches will be : 25% will not hatch, 25% will not have crests and 50% will have crests. If a crested heterozygous bird is crossed with an un-crested one, the resulting hatch should be 50% crested and 50% plain.

Bluebill started sitting on eggs just after the Easter week freeze, so only the eggs laid that morning had a chance anyway.

Happy Mother's Day

Springtime

Local weather seems fixed on skipping straight to early summer. I'm in t-shirts and shorts and still sweating -- it's been in the mid-80s (30°C) already. News reports said we'd had the driest December - January - February period on record for over 100 years. It doesn't seem to have affected the wildflowers, though. And finding springs has never been easier: just walk into the woods and listen for frogs.

Hubby tilled up the garden. He mowed the grass for the first time, or part of it anyway -- he also experienced the traditional first bending of the lawn mower blade.

Tiny ants keep popping up in the kitchen, and outdoors the larger ones are unrelenting. Diatomaceous earth poured onto an ant superhighway only served to split them into two trails on either side; seemingly twice as many ants.

I happened upon my first migrant (Swainson's Thrush) when I was without binoculars, and had to practice a considerable amount of stealthy sneaking to confirm the ID. We've seen or heard several others since then: Louisiana Waterthrush, Northern Parula, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, Black and White Warbler, Common Yellowthroat, Rough-winged Swallows, Broad-winged Hawk.

The chickens' and ducks' fancy has turned to love, or to mating at any rate. The female muscovy is trying to sit on eggs yet again, but that duck doesn't have a lick of sense so I'm not holding my breath. The chickens are laying very well, but the color of the eggs is lighter than last year. Sometimes the green/blue eggs are almost as pale as the white ones. Hens are supposed to lay fewer eggs every year, but larger ones. I don't think our Leghorn or Marans read that book though, because their eggs are smaller than last year.

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Edited to correct horrendous spelling error. I read once that the smarter you get, the worse your spelling becomes. It's probably not true, but I repeat it a lot anyway.

Egg without a shell

It may appear normal, but this duck egg is missing its shell and is covered only by a thin membrane.

Chickens lay eggs at any old time of day, but ducks are more organized: they almost always lay in the early morning. Sometimes if we let them out of the pen before normal, they're forced to lay eggs in the grass or other odd places. Like the porch.

Every now and then a chicken will lay an egg without a shell. It's usually when they first start laying that this happens -- as if all their parts aren't yet working correctly. But sometimes it occurs long after you'd think all their reproductive processes would be sorted out already.

I tried googling to find the cause, but mainly came up with, "It just happens sometimes." I hadn't noticed the ducks doing it too, until this egg.

As this page on Odd Eggs notes, when you pick it up, it feels like a water balloon.

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Half the fun of googling is finding the stuff that you didn't know you didn't know. For example I'd heard of century eggs (aka thousand-year-old eggs), and although they don't sound appetizing to me, I'd probably try one. Same with tea eggs. But Balut? Umm, no thanks.

Disheartened

It probably wouldn't have worked out anyway.

The snappers have bred so successfully, that the minute his little webbed feet touched the pond, this duckling would've become turtle food. We think they were even behind the recent demise of the tweed duck, the largest of our Runners.

Indian Runner ducks aren't supposed to go broody. But this one did, and sat on a great many eggs. I didn't figure she would stick to it... after all, this is the home of the Muscovy duck who thinks she only has to sit on her eggs at night, and the hens who play musical nests when trying to brood.

This gal turned out to be amazingly fierce when protecting her eggs. Only this baby hatched, though. Oh, he was so cute! The first time I saw him, I'd leaned over to question her (in the proud tradition of prospective grandmothers everywhere), "Why haven't you had any babies yet?" And there he was, standing on her back.

There is not much in this world cuter than a duckling. Quick, run get the camera! By the time I'd returned, the baby was in this position, trying to take a little nap by her side. I had to use the zoom - she didn't want us anywhere near him.

He died three days later, of unknown causes.

Unfit mother?

Everyone will tell you how prolific muscovies are. "If you have a pair, you'll soon have dozens," they'll say.

But this makes at least the third time that our gal has failed to hatch a single egg. (Not always her fault - Jasmine found and ate all the eggs once.)

This time she laid about ten of them, in the chicken coop. She sat on them all night, wandered around off the nest most of the day, and then finally abandoned them after a week or so.

Dirt

"A poor drainage area is usually defined as an area where water will sit in puddles for several hours after a heavy rainfall."


When this picture was taken, it had not rained in 4 days.

As you might guess from the lovely cover crop of weeds and standing water, this is our garden spot.

Everywhere we went, my husband ogled piles of dirt. "Look at that dirt! That's good dirt. Where do you think they got that dirt?"

I feared he'd have a wreck and I'd be left tearfully explaining to police officers that dirt envy did him in.

When piles of really good dirt suddenly appeared at a neighbor's, it was the last straw. We screeched to a halt. An investigation was conducted. We obtained a telephone number.

And voila!



I'll never use the phrase dirt cheap again. Dirt is actually much more expensive than you'd think.



Stay tuned for part II, The Quest for Compost...


The ducks, who were very interested in the whole process.

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Opening quote from Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew.

How to write poetry

"Once upon a midnight lunchtime dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore blog,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door."

"Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven muscovy duck, of the saintly poopy days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But with mien of lord or lady, perched above below my chamber door.
Perched upon a bust of Pallas an ancient doormat, just above below my chamber door,
Perched, and sat shat, and nothing more."






(Apologies to Edgar Allen Poe.)

(Also apologies that I could not figure out how to make the line breaks look prettier!)

Ducks with short memories

Despite my euphoria last year when the ducks took a dip in the pond, they didn't make it a regular practice. I eventually resigned myself to the fact that they'd never be pond ducks.

It was so dry over the fall that the spring feeding the ditch dried up. Once it started raining, water flowed there again, but the ducks ignored it in favor of their kiddie pool.

At first we just tried driving them into the ditch. "Hey, remember this? You loved it last year!" Even though their feet were wet, I guess they were too scared to realize where they were.

We applied weed-eating and subtle pressure. We moved their food closer and closer to the ditch. Then one day they remembered, or maybe just rediscovered, how much they liked it there.


Happy duck


You've heard that phrase about water and a duck's back...?

One day last spring we saw them wandering towards the far side of the pond. "What in the world are they doing over there?" we wondered, but didn't think much about it. That night they came back to the pen with one less duck in tow... So we're down to seven ducks now. They may forget the ditch, but so far they've never forgotten that there are coyotes beyond the yard.

Hard luck

Poor little gal.

It's been t-shirt weather here for the past week. Even in Alabama, 75 degree weather in January is just not right. (That's 24°C.)

The duck pictured standing on ice a few weeks ago is the one who started out black and turned "tweed". Now she's getting more and more white feathers and I'm interested to see if she'll become completely white in the end.

Another one of the formerly all-black ducks is starting to develop a few white feathers now too, so he may be headed down the same path.

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Note:
Before posting this entry, I decided to try doing a bit of research to see if this was a common phenomenon among black Indian Runner ducks. Now I'm suspecting that there may have been significant interbreeding with some Cayuga ducks, which apparently start out black and become more white-flecked as they age. (Scroll down to the photos at the bottom of that link.) Email me privately for the name of the mail-order hatchery we used, if you want to avoid receiving these alledged Indian Runner ducks!

Another note:
For anyone new to reading this blog - the ducks are just kept in this pen at night (for their safety), and are free to roam during the day.

Indian Runner Ducks

We ordered Indian Runner Ducks from a hatchery. I expected them to look like the pictures in the catalog.

Here is what they really look like:



Somewhat upright, especially compared to the Mallard, but not exactly the bowling-pin posture we were led to expect.

And I was a bit disappointed when the yellow fuzz of the Fawn and White ducklings gave way to the mishmash of colors that barely resembled the catalog drawings.



At least the black ducks' color was mostly correct.

Notice that the black duck in the foreground has a couple of white feathers though. I thought it was kind of cute when they first appeared. A black duck with a few stray "white hairs".

Now that they've molted, she can't seem to decide what color she wants to be.

Getting my ducks in a row