birds – Pete's Blog

Just over a week ago, Mandy and I were commenting that we had not seen any baby birds this year. It is lovely to pootle along on Narrowboat Thuis, watching for the ducklings, goslings, cygnets, cooties and moorhen chicks. I am not sure why moorhen chicks don’t get a cute name like the others.

Well this week the ducklings have started arriving and I have seen new families every day.

This group of ten ducklings were so small we wondered if they had ever been in the water. Mummy duck jumped into the canal in front of us, and one by one the ducklings followed, kicking their legs to try to work out how to stop going in circles.

I learnt something new about ducklings this week. Apparently the mother only lays one egg a day, but does not sit on the nest to incubate them until she has a full set of eggs. That way they all hatch at about the same time. Very clever.

I took Lulu dog for a walk to a bird sanctuary yesterday. The geese were being quite aggressive. I reckon that may be because they also have eggs coming up to hatching. Now we have the ducklings I look forward to seeing the other birds. It is a great time of year for nature and a great time of year to be on a boat.

Our TV on the narrowboat uses old photographs as a screen saver. It shows photos from similar dates in previous years. For two weeks I have been looking at ducklings, goslings and signets. But this year we have seen nothing – till yesterday.

First we saw a new family of red headed ducks. I didn’t get a picture sadly. And then we passed three individual ducklings, including this one. Based on previous years I now expect to see more and more over the next few weeks.

So I have two questions. 1. Why do ducklings all arrive at once? 2. Why are they later this year when the weather is really warm this year?

I am guessing the answer to the first is that being born in Spring gives them the best chance of survival. It is late enough to avoid the worst cold weather, and early enough to keep numbers of predators low. The second is more tricky. Mallards have a 28 day incubation period, so perhaps the current warm weather is irrelevant. The blog I wrote a month ago was entitled “Is it too cold to live on a narrowboat?”. So did the ducks just wait another week to incubate their eggs?

Things that make you say “hmmm”.

Tag: birds

The ducklings are back!

When do ducklings arrive on the canal?