Tuesday, June 14, 2011

a visiting female mallard interupts our morning routine

We had a female mallard fly in to visit the duckies this morning.

Keelyn was doing her loud, "come over here everybody" quack while the other girls were preening from their first bath, and the boys were outside the aviary foraging. (Our normal morning routine while Keelyn is on the mend.) Beau tried twice to walk through the aviary fencing confussed and upset about something. It wasn't until then that I noticed her flying over. She circled then landed in the yard between the aviary and the garden. She seemed to be interested in pool and food.

It was so funny; as soon as this young female landed she started walking over caustiously. Darrick was the only on willing to go out and "greet" her. He was so excited to see this other girlie duckie. However, Darrick is not very good at flirting and our visitor was not impressed. I guess she doesn't appreciate being chased. Darrick cracked me up. He ran over to her, chased her, gave up, came back over and bragged at bit to the other boys, then did that again a few times.

Our visting female came over a foraged a bit with the boys where the pools had over flowed outside the aviary. She seemed to be looking for a way to get to the pool, but settled for a little digging around for goodies in the dirt with the boys (not too close mind you).

Then Darrick tried the run around and chase her yet another time. She had enough of that and fly away.

It was a very enjoyable thing to watch.

I personally have concerns about the wild ducks getting used to sharing with our pet ducks. But if Darrick continues "greet" all vistors by running about wildly chasing them, we may have no reason to be concerned.




2 comments:

Shanti Perez said...

The little mallard gal seems wobbly on her legs. Do you think she's injured?

SAM said...

(To Shanti) She does seem to have a little bit of a limp, but we will tell you that she was able to out run Darrick (our beautiful young frisky male Cayuga). So I don’t think it is a major injury, plus we our yard is full of acorns and mole mounds, and all sorts of wild mess. :D which might have contributed.