It's amazing how fast they are growing. They are eating a diet of baby duck crumble and water hyacinth, and nearly doubled in size. No escaping, just had the one predator attempt.
Spiderwort, Spring 2022
Every Spring, around Alban Eilir, all the Spiderwort start blooming. The flowers are open in the very early morning, and as the sun rises they appear to be glowing 🟣. They are amazingly beautiful, and one of the few plants of early spring that is native to this area and edible.
Every year I transplant seedlings from the mowed areas to safer areas of my place. And every year I have more and more beautiful color in the spring. One year I used the flowers to color eggs, by sticking them to the egg and then boiling the egg in a wrapper. It came out amazingly.
Gratuitous Duckling Photos
After I reinforced the lower areas of the enclosure with mesh wire fencing, we were ready to go and buy ducklings again. This time the store had a cheaper variety, the Pekin duck.
They start off with yellow feathers and turn white. The store personnel had no idea about gender, but tried to tell me that higher pitched squeaking is an indicator of female birds. I hope they are female for the 🥚.
On the second day I put some water in one of the containers, and I was so worried it that my daughter figured out how to use a piece of wood as a duck bridge, which they quickly figured out. Then I was worried that the water would be too deep. I said, "Do you think the water is too deep for them?" And right after I said it one of them diced underwater and started zooming around under there. I guess they figured it out.
Gone-lings, not Ducklings
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One of the more helpful learning tools in life can be learning from other people's mistakes. When I teach I often talk about some of my mistakes, to use as examples and to reassure the student that mistakes happen and it's what you do afterward that matter.
One of the things I learned is that small ducks can fit through really small areas in any enclosure to escape. It cost me the price of the birds I lost, about $25.
So these are not my ducklings, but my gone-lings. I hope they fed one of neighborhood cats or rats very well.
The Ducks Enclosure Part 2
After much deliberation, I ordered a chicken enclosure from the Walmart website for about $300. I am one hundred percent sure that the enclosure came from China originally, as it was written all over the instructions and the box. It was not very easy to put together, largely because the diagram of the finished product showed the door on the wrong side of roof. But after following all of the directions I only ended up breaking one of the welds and had an enclosure. And the door is crooked.
My daughter helped me with the netting, which is zip tied to the aluminum frame. It all looked great, so we went to the store and came home with three baby 🦆. She was so worried the ducks would be too cold with the night temperatures down in the 50s that she brought them in her room at night.
The next day when I got home from work, the ducklings were gone. It looked more like they had escaped rather than that a predator had eaten them, as there were no mess and feathers. I have no doubt that after they escaped something came to eat them.
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