Earlier this spring we spotted a mother duck with eight fluffy chicks on the creek/slough that splits our property here. The next day she was down to five, and then four... it's a hard old world sometimes. Turtles can live to 150, so I hear, but most only see an hour or two.
It was easier for her to keep track of three or four trotting at her heels between slough and pond, she could tell when one was straggling and wait for it to catch up. And then when I saw her next, it was with one duckling and a useless left leg. She was moving heavily, clumsily and with many stops in the tall grass ("Don't cut the grass there, Nola, the ducks are using it for cover.") and her duckling sticking close.
We talked about what to do, if anything. They're not tame, they have their own lives and their own ideas about how to manage. We could kill her just trying to catch her, and it wasn't as though she looked to us for anything or asked for help.
So Nola picked up some feed at the store, rated as good for both adults and young, and scattered it at several 'safe' points along their route. We kept that up for a few days; some other ducks came along and had a go at it, but after a bit our girl let them know this was her pond and her cornucopia. She always swam well, it was just on land that she had trouble.
By end of May she was walking normally, and her duckling was 'most as big as a coot. It's now just beginning to fledge and looks to be another female. They're both coming around regularly several times a day. They go straight to the spot where Nola shakes out feed for them, and if Nola approaches with the container, they do no more than back off to the other side of the pond while she pours it.
There's something so thoroughly gratifying about going out on back deck of a summer's morning, looking out at the irises blooming and reflection of the willow tree and the pines in the still pond water, listening to unseen nesting birds scolding and nattering, and seeing now and again the duck and her almost-grown child waddling through the grass to her pond. Every day we see them is another day they've won.
