Wednesday, June 22, 2016

They are hatching!

The little wood ducklings started hatching this morning.


Fancy has been very loud for the last 24 hours.  For weeks she has been relatively quite - just sitting on her eggs all day long, save for a few quick breaks to swim and eat.  But starting yesterday, she has been moving around a lot and constantly making clucking noises.  I think she was talking to her eggs.  I know from past experience with the mallard eggs we incubated, that you can hear them peeping from inside their shells.  I'm sure she heard it too!

This is a still shot from our camera.  It's using night
vision, so the color is blue.  The two eggs in the center 
with the black spots are pipping. 

We first noticed a few eggs "pipping" (term for the very beginnings of hatching) around 7:30 when Fancy went out for breakfast.  Shortly after that she returned so we had a harder time seeing what was going on.  Not too long later, we saw a couple of tiny ducks peaking out from under mama!  And now they are just multiplying like crazy.  There were 19 eggs, so if most of them hatch it will be a very crowded nest!  

Enjoy these videos, taken during different stages this morning.  I'll update again later when they are done hatching.

And believe it or not, they will ALL leave the nest for good tomorrow morning! I can't miss that...

This first video shows a cute little face in the top 
left corner.  Be sure to turn up your sound!


Here you can clearly see the first two ducklings.
  Fancy is trying to keep them tucked under her, 
but they don't seem to agree. You can also see Fancy
moving around the empty shells.

In this clip there are way more ducklings! And if you
look closely under mama duck on the right, you can see 
one coming out of it's shell (more in the next video).

More of the little one coming out of it's shell.
You can see Fancy helping him out. 

So much cuteness!  And they aren't even all hatched!


Check back later, and I'll post more when there is more to see! 





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