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Wednesday 8 June 2016

Duck luck


A mallard duckling tries to scale a waterfall on the river Dove this morning. Its mother was pecking around on top apparently unconcerned. Could explain why she only had one duckling left.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Time for rationality, ducks don't do much parenting and if the wretched thing gets into a fix there is not much the parent can do. That which doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

A K Haart said...

Roger – further upstream there was a female mallard with at least six ducklings in a stretch of shallow water with reeds for the ducklings to hide. A perfect breeding spot.

To my eye mallards seem to be so successful that some of them are forced into marginal breeding areas. Even if their ducklings die and the parental genes are not passed on, there will always be offspring of more successful mallards who have to try these areas because of the size of the population. It may even be partly a matter of luck – hence the title.