17 and 10

East nest17 ducklings jumped on May 20th. All of the eggs produced a duckling.

West nest10 ducklings jumped on May 23rd. There were 2 unhatched eggs and one duckling who hatched late and was not able to go (see below). I was out of town so did not have an outside camera set up for this jump day.

South nest – The hooded merganser is incubating 1 wood duck and 10 merganser eggs that are due to hatch sometime between June 1st and 7th. I’ll start checking the eggs and will post when I know more about the date. I hope to have two outside cameras set up on their jump day, to cover the outside view from two different perspectives.

Round two? – Wood ducks are still visiting the East and West nest boxes each day. It’s very possible they will lay eggs and hatch them since this has occurred here many times in the past, as shown by the duckling count history on this site’s main page. If so l will turn the nest box cameras on again.

About late ducklings that cannot leave with the others:

Late ducklings often occur in wood duck nests. If you were watching the West nest camera on May 23rd you saw one that was left behind.

A late duckling can occur due to “dumping” which is the actual biologist’s term for when a duck lays an egg in another duck’s nest. When the one duck that “owns” the nest starts to keep all of eggs warm this starts their development. They are dormant as long as they remain cool, so even though the oldest egg was laid perhaps 2 weeks before the most recent one, they all start developing at the same time and they all hatch at the same time. This applies to both the dozen or so eggs laid by the duck that incubates and also to any other eggs laid by other ducks during the preceding weeks. The incubating duck will raise and care for all that hatch. Our record here is 31 eggs of which 25 hatched. Since one duck lays about a dozen, that’s the result of at least 3 ducks (probably more) providing eggs.

When an egg is dumped by another duck after incubation starts, it will develop too but will be behind the others. If the timing is just wrong the duckling will hatch while the others are still in the nest, but it will be too many hours later than the main group. So although it will be with the others in the nest for a while, the late duckling will not have had the necessary 20 or so hours out of the egg to become dry and strong and it won’t be ready when the others must leave.

What happens to late ducklings? They die. This is a harsh part of nature that occurs in many wood duck nests each spring. The difference here that makes it hard for us is the camera inside the nest box so we can see it. It is a sad experience. But when I’ve observed nature simply taking its course – and I did that this time, playing back the recordings after I got home again – I’ve seen that late ducklings do not seem to suffer. Shortly after the others leave they just shut down and stop moving. I like to think this is a nature-designed response; that is, if it’s impossible for a duckling to survive then it goes to sleep and dies peacefully. In the past I have taken late ducklings to the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Minnesota – I made a video about that called “Little Woodie’s First Day“- but due to avian flu they are not accepting ducklings now so I could not have done that even if I was here.

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