skip to main |
skip to sidebar
As always I'm full of wonder and admiration when it comes to birds and their egg producing abilities.
An evolutionary miracle from a time even before the Dinosaurs.
The Mallard duck is one of the most successful and prolific waterbird species on the Planet, and watching Disco having just laid 17 eggs I'm not surprised ! They contain all the DNA ingredients for new life and never cease to amaze me.
The incubation by the parent in itself is amazing maintaining a temperature of 99 F for a month, regardless of the changing weather conditions around them. Having 4 of Disco's eggs in the incubator I have to copy to some extent what Disco does to successfully hatch her brood. After 6 days I'm able to candle the eggs and check if they are indeed alive and viable. The photo above shows what can be observed by candling, showing the embryo and blood vessels forming. From the 9th to the 25th day, I have to allow the eggs to cool down once a day for about 15 minutes, giving them a fine mist spray before closing the incubator back to the 99 F. This is emulating exactly what the mother duck does when leaving the nest to eat and wash once a day while nesting in the wild. The eggs also have to be turned in order to prevent them sticking to the inside of the shell and dying. The final 3 days requires no more turning, a slight drop in temperature and raised humidity.
So next time you see a mother duck with a large brood of ducklings in tow, just think what a feat she has achieved !
After a couple of days in the incubator I again candled the swamped ducks eggs. At least 4 of the 14 were showing signs of life. They are in the final stages of development, so it is difficult to see exactly what's going on by candling.
These eggs will have been submerged 2 or 3 times in icy water for a couple of hours at a time, and I will be astonished if they all survive. However I should know within a few days how many we saved in the nick of time.
Meanwhile I will prepare the brooding box with a photo of their Mum, since I am still unable to catch her.
A late clutch from an abandoned ducks nest is now under the care of the River Nairn Swans and Waterfowl Trust.
I was aware of this nest ever since it's beginning and had hoped that it would not be discovered since it was in a riverside garden.
However something scared the mother from the nest, to the point she did not return on the coldest night of August last week. The abandoned eggs were cold and wet and I gave little hope that any would survive since they were 3 weeks into their incubation. On candling the eggs no signs of life were detected and some were obviously dead and were discarded.
The remainder I left in the incubator in the hope that maybe one or two might still be alive. After 3 days I candled the eggs again and was astonished to see the flicker of life in ALL the eggs, this was quite a miracle after being left cold and wet in close to freezing temperatures. At the point of writing, 4 have hatched with one doing so right now, and another 5 chapping at the shells. The will to survive in all of nature is truly amazing ! Although I know who the mother is, trying to catch her to rear these ducklings has so far been unsuccessful.
