Duckling News and Bad News

Well, I have some very bad news about some of the Lake Murray favorites. The bad news is that the coyotes have been extremely active in the area around the fishing pier and have killed several domestic birds and perhaps a wild one or hybrid. But, before I give you more details about that, I would like to say that this has been a very good duckling season. So I will give you the duckling news first, then the bad news about who is gone.

First, I put together a slideshow. Below the slideshow, I will give you an update on some of the individuals in the video.  Here is the slideshow:

This photo was taken today. Two moms had a single duckling in the area. However, I think the mama to this little one has disappeared. This female is the mother of the other duckling who has also disappeared. She is trying to adopt the one without a mom, but he is making it difficult to her. His future does not look good unless he lets her get close to him.

These are the two ducklings which used to go across the lake in deep water at least two or three times a day. They are nearly independent and their mama can't keep up with them. They've wandered off on their own many times.

This is "Little Guy." His mama was raising him near the parking lot. However, this particular mama duck loves to take her ducklings to an inaccessible area around the time they are a month old. Little Guy is about two weeks old here. Last I saw him, he was about 4-5 weeks old and getting very big and feathering fast. I wouldn't be surprised if he was one of the many young ducks whom I've seen hanging out together lately. I don't think I could recognize him now.

This is Leuci, a Leucistic mallard. She's at least seven or eight years old. This is her with her last duckling out of a brood of about six ducklings. This little guy lived a few days longer than this photo, but didn't make it.

These two ducklings and the one in the photo below this one have a strange story. The two mamas look almost exactly alike. At one time, all three of the ducklings were together. There were two older ducklings and an adopted younger duckling. Then, when the bigger ducklings turned about two weeks old, the family split in two. One older one and a much younger one went with one mom and another older one went with the other mom. When the two moms get together, the three ducklings mix and match and are fine. However, the mom with two does not accept the other one, so when the families depart, the one duckling goes with one mom and the others go with the other mom.

Here is a new duck someone dumped at the lake. She has a hybrid mallard boyfriend already and is very shy. She goes way off to the far end of the lake and back to the docks everyday. I'm really surprised she's still alive because she is bright as day and I'm sure the coyotes see her at night.

OK, now for the bad news.

Remember the two new ducks I mentioned in my last post? Well, I don't even think it was a week after they arrived that the Pekin disappeared. The brown khaki duck went off with Blue for a while, then started hanging around Runner Duck and his buff friend. She was fine for about a month, then she, too, disappeared. I'm really hoping that their owners had a change of heart and came back to get them. I haven't seen any evidence of them being eaten, but I don't always see that when it happens.

Miss Grey reappeared and I was really happy. She was fine for at least a week or two, then disappeared again. Today, I found a large pile of feathers that looked exactly like hers. Since she has disappeared for long periods before, I'm hoping that the feathers were not from her and she will show up again.

Eight-year-old Snowie may have also been a victim of the coyotes, too. I saw some speculum feathers and some body and wing feathers that look a lot like her special feather patterns. Plus, her mate, Snowy has been acting very strange and her son seems traumatized. I did not find her on her nest.

Warning, grizzly details in this paragraph: However, someone said they found a head of a "regular mallard" near where I found the feathers, so it might not be hers. They said it was sliced clean off, which makes me wonder if humans are involved, though I have heard that can also happen naturally.

As you can see from this photo, her head doesn't look like a "regular mallard."

Another duck that's missing is the one that nesting near Peaches a few years ago. She was a Project Wildlife duck from a few years ago and hung out in that area. Today I found four duck eggs with holes in them. I suspect that they belonged to the owner of the feathers. Snowie had two eggs in her nest which were abandoned and disappeared a long time ago and these new eggs were still fresh.

Also, I am worried about this white goose. He hangs out with the grey goose and they have been at the lake a very long time. I only saw the grey goose today. This is extremely unusual as they are always together. They're both males, so no one is nesting with this pair. Here's a picture of them in 2012.

Miss Angel has also not been seen for over two weeks, but was not healthy the last time I saw her. Her mates, Little Guy and Big Guy, have also not been seen which makes me think she is hiding somewhere with them.

July Ducklings

So far, duckling season at Lake Murray this year has been pretty poor. Not only are they disappearing when I do see them, there's been fewer of them. However, some have managed to make it to adulthood. Here are three late season broods.

The first two must be from sisters because the moms look very similar. I believe that these are both second broods for those mothers.

This third family is at the two-week-old mark. The duckling at the front is a hybrid and if he survives, he will be a chunky-looking mallard.

Another duckling made it until he was three weeks old and disappeared. He was very independent and just old enough that he could have lived on his own, so I'm hoping he just went off somewhere and is hiding.

Northern Rough-Winged Swallows Feeding Their Babies

This morning, I was privileged to see two very young northern rough-winged swallows getting fed at Lake Murray. Sorry for the blurriness, they were far away and it was cloudy and there were branches in my way.

This first photo shows a hummingbird who was very interested in what was going on. Yes, there are two babies in the first two photos, one is closer to the right and less active. The first two pictures also have an adult. The first photo shows an adult leaving after feeding the youngster and the second photo shows the adult approaching the youngster who begins to show a begging posture. Note that in both photos the other baby doesn't react.

Another immature (teenager) rough-winged swallow was also waiting to get fed. The swallows were doing a good job keeping the bugs down today.

Once again, ducklings

Ducklings are finally starting to arrive at Lake Murray and, fortunately, the gulls have diminished enough so that I can enjoy them without worrying about them getting snagged right in front of me. Also, the herons' chicks are also mostly grown, which means there is less desperation to get food. I've only seen one black-crowned night heron, for example.

I would post about other birds and their babies, except I'm not seeing too many or they were moving around too much. There was a killdeer nest, but it is unknown what happened to it.

Yesterday, I saw all these ducklings.

A mom with 8 ducklings, she was very shy. A pied-billed grebe swam under them and mom got really mad and beat the grebe up. I'm not sure if the grebe was after the ducklings, or just chasing a fish. The grebe's baby was disappointed that mom didn't get something to eat.

Another shy mother with four littles.

Bath time for these ducklings who made it to one week old.

The older ducklings have grown a little. A heron was in a tree watching them, but they didn't see it until it flew off. They are still small enough to get eaten or killed by the bigger herons.

And, Pumpkin with Runner Duck and her other friends.

Babies From This Morning

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.

Ducklings Today

After a long while of seeing no ducklings, a mom showed up with what looked like 13 ducklings (or maybe 12, hard to say as they move around so fast). 11-12 were with her, and one was near another female. That one will be talking about later.

She had a little yellow-ish one:

Competing for flies:

I think the mom might be Trouble's mother from last year.

Here, they were passing by a gauntlet of about 30 gulls. Though the gulls seemed interested and, for a moment, I thought they were going to grab one, they didn't bother the family.

Two tired ducklings:

A duckling-napping in progress:

One duckling seemed to be hanging back with another female. I don't think he was her duckling. Later, when the ducklings went back toward this female, she attempted to steal three more of them. She approached this duckling who was screaming for the real mama. She began doing "mama talk" to the baby, but I think the baby was scared of her.

She ended up going back to her real mother:

She attempted to "mama talk" this one to her as well:

Then, this one, who was spending time with her before, went back to the shore and she followed:

She began "mama talking" and showing this one what to eat and was never aggressive towards him.

Though I saw the original mother with the 11-12 ducklings, later, this mother and this duckling disappeared. I've seen this happen before. Female ducks, this time of year, often get raging hormones, but either can't or don't want to sit on eggs. So, when they see a large brood of ducklings under three days old, they will act like they're the mother. Sometimes, a few ducklings will begin to follow her instead of the real mother. Sometimes, these duckling-nappers end up being better mothers than the real mother. One duckling-napper raised four babies out of the 9-10 the real mother had. The real mother lost all of hers.

This seems to only happen during the bonding period, up to about three days old. After that, the original mother will attack any babies she doesn't think are hers, including ducklings that have been "away" for that long. Also, mothers who don't have the hormonal change will attack babies as well.

The two babies are still doing OK, but are very brave. The other five are getting very large and are starting to feather out.

We had a large number of Canada geese show up at the lake. The four unmarried teenage geese were checking them out. But, their original father brutally attacked one of the young males over and over, but the youngster was OK. Some of the other geese flew off without taking any of the teens with them. I'm hoping that the teens will follow the migratory geese out of the area.

There were also lesser scaup there, a bit late for them:

And, a white-faced ibis came to visit.