Today's walk report: 042317, intruder alert!

A beautiful Sunday A.M. walk. We went to see "our babies" and it was a good thing. At least we think it was. When we got to the pond we found mama duck splayed out on the ground with a look of concern in her eyes. It was for good reason. On the other side of the pond a  Great Egret  (Ardea alba) stood and it appeared as though the ducklings were on its mind. Egrets are known to eat a ducking whole. Well, everywhere you look in the urban jungle there's human intervention and a rather large human male wasn't going to have this bird threatening our ducks, so I chased it off.

The intruder.

Mom protecting her babies.

After the coast was clear.

Today's walk report: 042117, Breaking News!!

We're grandparents! Well, sort of...

If you have followed this blog even modestly you probably know by now of our affection for a pair of ducks we've come to know well. So well, in fact, that we ended up naming them after ourselves in 2014. Backtracking, so far, the earliest photos I have of these ducks were taken in February, 2013. Yesterday we took a walk sans cameras to the pond with the intention of feeding and visiting "our" ducks. If you take issue with this let me point something out. These are "urban" ducks, they get fed all sorts of crap by humans. We feed them on occasion and we feed them duck food. A year ago the male duck had a seriously injured leg. He could not get out of the water and walk and we're certain our feeding him helped in his recovery. Many people who know ducks call mallards such as these, domestic mallards. Only two species of ducks have been domesticated: the Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) and the Muscovy Duck (Cairina moschata). Anyway, yesterday our female, Docken duck, swam over to my girl, Docken human, along with 8 cute as can be ducklings!

Today we went back early in the A.M. with cameras and got some pictures. We're sure to get a lot more in the days to come.

About 15 minutes in daddy duck Eric showed up and apparently he was randy to start another clutch. Hey, it's nature but it's not a pretty sight. It only went on for about one minute.

After that dad struts his stuff....

and mom appears a bit disoriented...

She also has a thing or two to say about the ordeal...

but soon realized it was time to go back to being a mom...

while dad just watches on...

Today's walk report: 110516, Breaking News!

This is a walk report special report...

Yesterday, 11/04/16, we took an early evening walk to our familiar garden hang. Of late we've been checking the garden pond hoping for the fall return of our dear duck friends, Docken and Eric (named after us because they're very much like us). We walked around the pond, let out a few quacks but alas, no ducks. We moved over to a bench about 20 yards from the pond, sat and yakked. Lo and behold about 10 minutes in I see something waddling towards us out the corner of my eye. It was them! About 5 and 1/2 months since we last saw them they must have recognized our voices (we know this to be true) and they came walking over to greet us. You have no idea how happy we were to see these guys. And fortunately we had organic oatmeal for them--everyone was happy.

With this morning's trek to the garden they seemed as excited to see us as we were to see them.

The music was a simple solution for dealing with bad audio from the camera. The song, Acquiring The Taste by Gentle Giant was chosen based mostly on a matching duration. Apparently if you live in Germany you won't be able to view the video because of copyright--Entschuldigung (sorry). Please watch the video full screen for the full effect.