Duckies!!!

[Buy A Paper Doll]

It's that time of year again! :happy: There are duckies roaming the neighborhood! There are 2 duckies - hens, I believe - in my next door neighbor's front yard. They're just hanging out, maybe looking to meet a pair of boy duckies, making their little quack-wack-wack noises and enjoying the evening. :)

Duckies are cool. :happy:

[Angelwing]

I love ducks. I'd love to have a couple pet ones, someday, but I love watching the wild ones in my yard/ditch. Mallards are the prominent ones around here, and they are just beautiful.

[butterfly1061]

Hey Jen,

Got pictures :D Bet they are too cute waddling around.

[kimsbirds]

We have dozens and dozens and dozens of baby Canada Geese allll over the place around here...they're soo cute I wanna just scoop 'em up for kisses but those hissing Daddy birds are a bit too skeery for me !!! LOL
Kimmie

[graushill]

The park near my house has a pond and you can spot ducks (mostly mallards), geese (canada, brown, white, black cheek that look like canada but are smaller, and a strange one that has a white head and brown body), soot hens, sea gulls, the occassional swan plus some rarer ducks (eiders and other species). The other day I swear I saw a bird that looked like a turkey standing by the water edge, but it couldn't have been, could it?

Anyway, the real reason I'm writing this is because there are a couple of mallard mamma ducks that have been drawing a lot of attention. One of them has what I think is the biggest clutch of babies I have ever seen: 10!
The first time I saw her, the babies must've been very young, all fuzzy, brown black, tiny little balls, just adorable. I admit I thought, oh, so cute, but I felt a bit sad thinking the chances of all them making it were pretty slim. So everyday I would jog by, give a quick count 1..3...6...oh just 9 no, there's the 10th, give a sigh of relief and move on. And I'm not sure how she's managed, but sure enough she still has 10 babies, and they're actually getting pretty big :) .

The other mamma duck has a smaller clutch, 6, but her claim to fame is that 3 of her babies are a pure buttercup yellow, the most adorable baby duckies you can imagine. The remaining three siblings are the normal brown black and really cute in their own right, but the three "blond" babies stand out :) . She, the mom, is actually lighter than other mallard females, she's not really brown, she's more like beige, so I wonder if that's why she got the yellow babies. Again, the babies have been growing up, and one of the cutest things is to see them resting on the shore of the pond, because they pile up on top of each other, a soft looking mound of brown black with touches of bright yellow :) . I have actually moved my jogging time from 6 to 7.30 in the evening, just to watch them resting.

As for the geese, yeah, the babies are cute, but I'm also scared of the parents. The other day a baby brown goose bobbled up to me as I stood and fidgeted with my mp3 player and I was all, oh hello there little fellow, when I heard an evil hissing sound to my right and sure enough charging up to me with was a big goose with his beak wide open. I've heard that the goose charge is often just a bluff but I aint too proud to say I didn't stand around to test the truth of that statement.

Gotta love spring :) !

Gloria

[Z28Taxman]

As for the geese, yeah, the babies are cute, but I'm also scared of the parents. The other day a baby brown goose bobbled up to me as I stood and fidgeted with my mp3 player and I was all, oh hello there little fellow, when I heard an evil hissing sound to my right and sure enough charging up to me with was a big goose with his beak wide open. I've heard that the goose charge is often just a bluff but I aint too proud to say I didn't stand around to test the truth of that statement.



My brother and I were out in a canoe on a local lake one spring and must have got a little too close to a swans nest. That was one very angry swan, it came after that canoe in a hurry. Guess what, an angry swan can get to you faster than you can paddle a canoe! :eek: