I was concerned today over the apperance of seven tiny ducklings on our local pond, it is rather late in the year to be starting a new family and the ducks on the pond, most of which are this years youngsters are a bunch of thugs. There is one budding new male in particular who can always be seen beating up some unsuspecting, and probably elderly, duck.
The ducklings in question are still at the stage where they bob around the pond like over excited corks and are scolded by their mothers for not getting out of the water with her... babies afterall need frequent naps. The cutest part though is where they attempt to get back into the water again... the baby will carefully position itself at the top of the cliff (or small concrete edge followed by a slope to us), it then waggles it's whole body before simply casting it's tiny body off the edge. The duckling then proceeds to bounce and slide down the slope before plopping into the water... a second later it bobs back to the surface again.
My other main worry when I arrived at the pond was the number of ducklings, my partner had totalled them at 8 last night (and you don't expect an accountant to be wrong about these things!) but this morning there were only seven minature blobs scurrying around. We are lucky enough to have a very low duckling mortality rate at the pond although the babies will run the twice daily risk of the main road, it never fails to bring a smile to my face to see a double decker bus stopped to allow mum to shepherd her babies across.
Nature, with the help of medcine and risk assessments is kind to us and it is easy to forget that for every pair of adult breeding ducks that when they die they will probably only leave a pair of surviving reproductive offspring. But then maybe this stable population structure is a good thing... if not we would be overrun with ducks.
Interesting fact: the collective term for ducks in water is a raft
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