Blair's Blog

Time for an update on the duck situation. Momma duck has a name, Amanda. Alyssa chose the name because she felt that we couldn’t just generically refer to “the duck” or even to “Momma” duck. I guess that it just wasn’t proper to be on anything but a first name basis with someone who has chosen to raise their kids (well, eggs) right at your front door.

Amanda has definitely settled in and is incubating the eggs pretty much full time – I think that she flies off to find food early in the morning and possibly in the evening too. She is also a lot less skittish and we can get a pretty good look at her while she sits on the nest. The  paper can get tossed onto the steps and we come and go as we like through the front door with out scaring Amanda away. I even managed to stick the camera in under the branches and took a picture while she was sitting there. She wasn’t too sure of the camera and made this weird Darth Vader-ish hissing/heavy breathing sound that I took to be a warning to back off. So you’ll have to be content with the one crooked and slightly out of focus portrait of Amanda.

We are expecting that the ducklings will be hatching around the July long weekend, which is in the 25-29 day range after when I think the last egg was laid. It turns out that mallards have a laying phase, where one egg is laid a day, and an incubation phase, where the hen sits on the nest most of the time. None of the eggs, even the first ones, begin to develop until the incubation phase starts. This means that all of the eggs hatch at once (within 24 hours) even though the first eggs in the clutch can be 2 weeks older than than the last. Weird. The U.S. Geological Survey site has a really good article on what to do when Mallards take up residence in your yard – worth reading.

Tags: Great Outdoors

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