An Adventure With a Duck

Yesterday I ran some errands after 6 pm when it was a bit cooler and the weekend traffic out to Isle of Palms had slowed down.

As I came home and turned right onto my street, a young looking female mallard duck was in the middle of the road. I couldn’t see if she had moved away from the car, so I stopped and got out.

Mommy duck had five babies hidden in the grasses on the island. Here I talk to her in what is my “pet” voice–which is way too highly pitched, LOL.

I called my neighbor, and she and I helped the mommy duck to safely walk her babies to the water in our neighborhood’s front ponds. From experience, I know that’s what ducks do. They nest away from water, and when the babies can do it, the mother “walks them to water.”

This task took both me and my neighbor and the mommy duck. The babies were newly hatched and weak, and it was so, so hot. The mommy duck led the parade and kept to places she could hide the babies until we helped her move them along–past front porches and fences and up to the pond.

My neighbor checked this morning, and the duck and her babies are all still in the front pond. So I walked up to take some pictures.

Nope they aren’t in the big pond where she went first yesterday.

Here they are–in the quiet part of this pond away from the fountain–and near the woods. It’s a much better spot for her and her family. At some point she crossed the street with them.

This little family will be very fragile for some time. There are so many predators around then: a passing alligator or river otter, a hawk or owl, and so forth.

We will see. But my neighbor and I did what we could.

PS: And on Friday, when I left Costco, a mother goose was crossing a very busy road with 9 half-grown little ones following her in a straight line. That area is too busy for me to have gotten a video.