I was surprised to see a couple of three week old ducklings all by themselves at Lake Murray, San Diego. I think they are the two ducklings I saw back on May 12th. The mom has been hiding them in the reeds, but somehow, they wandered off on their own. They're much too young to be by themselves. One of them is a boy and one is a girl. Already, Runner Duck attacked one of them, chasing him around. Runner duck tolerated the girl duckling, but not the boy duckling. Poor babies didn't know they weren't wanted near him. Pumpkin seemed a bit interested and "talked" to them a little. I think I heard their real mama call to them at least once.
They were following around the scalped mother duck who had seven ducklings last Monday and now has only three left. I'm betting that she was bedding down at night near where the two older ducklings were hiding. Probably, in the morning, when she did her mama talk telling her ducklings to move on, they began to follow them. However, she really didn't want them around and chased them whenever they got too close to her babies.
The small ducklings, however, were fearless and not afraid of the bigger ducklings. Here are two of them taking a bath.
Here is the youngest gosling who is starting to get her adult feathers. The other five are fully feathered and getting ready to fly.
And, there are a whole lot of dove squabs at the lake, too. Here are two of them who weren't sure if they had to move or should pretend I couldn't see them.
No comments:
Post a Comment