Sunday, April 20, 2008

baby (duck) steps

Shortly after we moved into our new home, my husband discovered a bird's nest in a little alcove under our mailbox.  (It's for the newspaper that we have not yet subscribed to).  He thought it was just sticks and grass so he poked around and then realized what he'd found.  The mama bird never returned.

Today, the hubbie was pulling weeds from the front garden and under some small shrubbery, he disturbed a mother duck--who scared the living *!%* out of my husband before she flew away.  He saw the eggs--swears he didn't actually touch them--but I'm wondering if she'll come back.  She flew off but was keeping an eye on him as he continued weeding and told us about the encounter.

Any guesses on if this mama is ever coming back?  If she doesn't incubate the eggs will they hatch?

(Of course, the hubbie found the weeds--and the eggs--after he went out to clean smashed eggs off of an outside garage window.  He blames highschool kids but I've heard lots of very vocal birds the last few mornings--I'm thinking we had an earlier aves-related mishap).

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Update:  Mama duck was back under the shrubbery last night.  Hubbie admitted he's surprised the duck before--it just wasn't as up close and personal.  Maybe we'll have a little row of ducklings following mama to the pond soon.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm glad to see the Mama duck came back. Hopefully you will see the Duck family soon. I can't imagine the surprise in T's face when he found the duck! The joys of weeding, you never know what you might find. R seems so excited with worms right now, he would be weeding all the time if it meant getting to see them squirm around!

Sarah said...

I was going to say YEP. But I see she came back. I worked for a wildlife shelter. We're big on "They WILL come back". That way we didn't end up trying to incubate eggs, or raise babies unnecessarily.