May 14, 2007
Byrne Creek Duckling Rescue!
Yumi and I found a mallard couple and five ducklings in the Byrne Creek sediment pond this afternoon.
Dad took off, leaving Mom to protect her babies. The family had either jumped in or come down the culvert, and once over the stop log the ducklings couldn't get out of the concrete basin. We hauled a debris log from the spillway and made a ramp, but it took Mom and the kids the longest time to figure out how to use it. We kept gently shooing them toward it, and Mom finally jumped out and stood near the top end of the log, and quacked to attract her kids. A couple of them figured it out and scooted up and over, followed eventually by a third, but two were left behind.
At that point it appeared that Mom was going to accept her losses and began leading the three down to the overflow pond. The two left behind became increasingly frantic, peep-peeping mournfully. Finally one of them discovered the log and scooted up, and fortunately number five saw him go and skittered on up as well.
By this time Mom and the other three were swimming down the overflow pond, and the two laggards veered off the spillway and into the habitat. One of them finally rejoined the group, but number five was lost in the spawning channel. We saw no. 5 several times and kept trying to shoo it toward the overflow pond, but it finally went to ground and stopped peeping, so we gave up. By that point we were wondering if our efforts were doing more damage than good!
Mom and the kids near the log we put in place as a ramp.