I have had a very busy year, and taken time off from writing this blog. I've been posting more tidbits on Facebook and Instagram lately and even taken to selling a few things on Etsy! But it is Spring again, and I simply must revisit the wood ducks.
Last Spring when I chronicled Skyler and her nest of eggs, you might recall that I spied on her by taking photos with my iPhone. While that worked, it was highly intrusive and she did NOT like it, often hissing at me. This year I decided to take a higher tech route. I picked up a video baby monitor on Craigslist and had my husband install it inside the duck house. It's almost perfect. It has night vision, sound and a movable camera so I can adjust the view from inside my house. The only downside is that I've yet to figure out how to record the video for sharing. There is an a/v port - I just don't know what to do with it yet. So when I share with you, you will get a video of a video. Sorry about that.
This Spring in Minnesota, the weather has been exceptionally nice, earlier than normal. Because of that, Skyler* was in the duck house sooner than I expected. She's likely been there more than a week, laying one egg a day - almost a month earlier than last year. Last season there were 21 eggs, resulting in 17 ducklings (See here: It's a full nest! to learn about the "compound nest".) I don't remember seeing wood ducks at all in our pond a few years ago. In 2015, there were a couple and this year there are at least a dozen - so I guess the babies came back!
In an ordinary year, a wood duck will lay around a dozen eggs. After today, Skyler should be at ten. I'll need to count each day after she leaves the nest so I can determine the hatch date - around 30 days after the last egg is laid. Isn't that amazing? All the eggs will hatch at the same time - around 30 days after the last one was laid. So some eggs will be much older than the others, yet they all hatch together! God is so amazing. The mother duck can't lay more than one egg a day and she wouldn't be able to care for them if they all hatched on different days for two weeks. So they all hatch on the same day. Wow.
While we wait on the hatching, here are some pictures and videos for you to watch. If anything interesting happens, I'll update you. Enjoy.
(And if you know how to record video from a baby monitor, let me know!)
* Last year I named the mama duck Skyler as my husband and I were in the midst of watching Breaking Bad... and it just sounded like a good bird name. I don't know that this is the same duck as last year - but I'm going to assume it is, because it doesn't really matter anyway.
 |
| On the first day that I noticed happenings in the duck house - there were 8 eggs. Aren't they pretty? |
 |
| My baby monitor spy cam, mounted inside the duck house. |
 |
| Skyler, with night vision. |
 |
| Skyler with a little color in the daytime, as seen from our new baby monitor. |
 |
| The camera adjusted to watch outside the duck house opening, watching for Skyler to return. My husband calls this "Duck TV". |
I caught a few of the adults swimming by yesterday.
Just hanging out on the eggs. About 10 seconds before
the end of the video, you can here her clucking.
Skyler is busy adjusting her eggs and fluffing up the nest.
No comments:
Post a Comment