LAST ONE SAVED !

Three days ago, a duck turned up with 7 new ducklings, incredibly 3 of them were beautiful yellow hybrids. Every few years we get one and they are usually taken by predators within a day or so. In my 16 years I have never seen 3 from one brood.

 The Crows and Gulls spot them easily and they rarely last a few days. one got taken 2 days ago, and another yesterday. The Crows and Gulls have already taken about 40 this year so I was determined that they would not get the last Yellow one !  Tonight I got a chance when  they turned up at feeding time, I saw a gull having a go and I waved my stick in the air to chase it off. 

The mother duck approached with the ducklings and fed happily on the Dried mealworms. I made a move for the net and of course all the birds scattered about 100 or more ducks. Luck was on my side as the yellow one and a sibling split from the others on my side of the river. I had to move as fast as I could to head them off as they headed downstream. As I got slightly ahead they turned and made for the bank, I pounced and got the sibling but the yellow one kept ahead and nearly got away, out of breath, I just managed to catch up and caught it ! 

My long standing experience gave me the edge, but catching ducklings in a river is not easy !  

                       It was imperative I got the yellow one and a sibling, to be reared together for the next 9 weeks.  

Currently they are in the coop alone, but I will gradually introduce Disco as a foster Mum, which I'm sure she will be able to do.

 Short video below of their first hour in captivity...having a good feed of Mealworm and lettuce !

Looking Back in Anger

Looking back into my computer photo records for 2006, to prove a point about the yellow/white ducks in the river. We had one before when a mallard duck hatched some ducklings and one was identical to the ones I just released into the river. It was killed by a crow on the 19th May 2006 and I brought it home to measure it because it was already a fair size when killed. The genes of these ducks still exist in the current duck population, it shows that we would and could have other variety of ducks if they were given half a chance to survive ! The light coloured ones stick out and are more easily targeted by the crows. Although yellow when small, they turn white at about 5 weeks old. For comparison sake take a look at the 3 released this week when they were younger, and the pics of the one that was killed back in 2006. If your wondering how I managed to get it after the Crow, a local man saw the Crow grab the duckling and threw a stone at it, the Crow dropped the duckling but it died when it reached the riverbank !
By the way, the latest news on this years duckling numbers is, 58 killed, 16 remaining to date.(they will not be safe for about another 3 weeks )