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What has been one of the few lovely Summer days, also turned up a new duck brood on the river.
A mother with 4 advanced ducklings about 7 weeks old. This is great to see since she is only the second mother who has managed to save some of her brood on the river by herself. I really admire ducks, with so much of the odds stacked against them they do their best. Just a week ago I witnessed a mother duck with her last two ducklings being attacked by a great black back gull, she grabbed hold of the black back after it swallowed one of her ducklings and tried to grab the other one.
This was real bravery, because the black back is a powerful top predator of ducks. Right now all the ducks are moulting and this takes about 3 weeks, until they grow their new flight feathers - they are literally sitting ducks !
Meanwhile the Douglas street brood of 7 are being well looked after by Mum, although confined to the garage her behaviour is as it would be on the river.
She is doing a great job, and how cute it is keeping them warm !!
Another new brood of 10 hatched yesterday, this takes the known total figures to date to 48. Exactly half have been lost to predators at the point of writing this post.
The Spare drakes on the river have probably unwittingly caused some of the losses by harassing and pouncing on the new mothers, forcing them to flee and leave their young open to attack by crows.
Sometimes it's nice to see mothers who allow their broods to mingle with others without getting into a fight over it.
Yesterday I witnessed at close hand how beautiful this can be, when a mother of 7 met up with the new mother and brood of 10.
Popeye is also getting ready for the new arrivals next week and is becoming more stand - offish.
Pleasant surprise on the Swans island this evening, another Duck with 9 ducklings newly hatched. Today at last gave us some respite from the cold northerly winds, and allowed the ducklings to catch a few flies. We currently have four separate broods, of 3, 5, 7, and 9, all of them under a week old - the losses as far as I'm aware are now 49. It looks like many of the ducks that lost their nests to the April flood, have had second clutches now coming on stream. I also know of at least two ducks sitting and should soon have broods, lets hope the crows have other prey in their sights meanwhile. I also noticed a drake with a broken wing this evening, with another one found dead recently I hope we don't have a local villain homing on on the poor ducks ! Needless to say, if you see any abuse of the river wildlife call the police or Scottish SPCA.
The duck with 5 ducklings was escorted by her mate this evening, this is quite rare because the drakes usually have little to do with a ducks brood.
