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The merganser moved just now and revealed an egg that is just starting to hatch. I don’t see any ducklings that are out yet but it’s starting. I can occasionally hear little peep sounds. They should be ready to leave tomorrow (Thursday) morning.

When I checked the west nest box this morning about half of the eggs were pipped (slightly broken by the duckling inside). I also just now (6:15 CDT) saw she was away from the nest and checked again: every one was pipped, therefore that has been happening today. Online info says they pip the eggshell 24 to 48 hours before hatching. My experience is it’s usually closer to 24. Ducklings need 20 or more hours in the nest box before they are ready to leave so there are now two likely scenarios:

1. The eggs hatch overnight tonight (Tuesday) and/or early on Wednesday. In this case the ducklings would stay in the nest box Wednesday night and Jump Day would be Thursday morning.
2. The eggs hatch later on Wednesday and/or Wednesday overnight. In this case Jump Day would be Friday morning.

There is of course the third possibility: they won’t do what I expect. For example, see my forecast for the East nest 2 weeks ago which was off by a whole day!

Whatever occurs, I will have an outdoor camera set up so that you can watch both inside and outside the nest simultaneously when the ducklings jump. (Go to birdsgv.com, scroll down a bit, and use the Live Cameras button.)

I’ll also turn on the Chat feature on Jump Day so that we can communicate that way. Two weeks ago it was fun and useful: you can type questions or leave comments and I can respond as we watch. Please join in if you want to:

“Join Chat” is a button that shows up on the camera page after I have enabled it. If you don’t see it on the camera page on Jump Day, refreshing your browser window should show it.

I know I said I’d have some video yesterday but it got unexpectedly busy. It also took longer to do it than I expected … although I expected that would happen. Here’s what I wrote to describe it:

5/22/2025 – We continue to stream live cameras every spring but this is the first new video since 2023.  Momma duck kept everyone watching in suspense all through the previous day when I thought they might go … they stayed overnight again. The next morning the ducklings were so very ready. She spent only a minute looking to be sure it was safe; multiple 5 to 10 minute looks is more typical. They left earlier than usual at 6:20; mid-morning is more common. Therefore many people who watched for a long time on the previous day missed the event. A video showing at least some raw footage was strongly requested … but it seems I don’t know how to do raw footage. So, here’s a story, edited as usual.

As usual the video is also linked from the “Videos” page of the birdsgv.com web site.

They were so ready! At 6:20 this morning the East nest duck jumped up to the door, looked around for only a minute, and then called for her ducklings. The last duckling, as it always seems to be, struggled to get to the door but after a tense minute of trying and falling back and trying again, success. They hung around below the nest box for just a short time and then went down toward the creek and out of camera range at 6:24. Just 4 brief minutes of activity.

Since this was such an early jump time many people probably weren’t watching, at least in this and in western USA time zones. I’ll make a video. To do that I have to download the playback files from the cameras and do at least some edits to get the good scenes, so it takes a little while. I’ll have it ready later today and will let you know via another blog post like this one. Here are a few still images from the recordings.

I’ve been holding off on posting this, thinking maybe the East nest ducklings still might leave today. But as the evening closes in it’s become clear that they have settled in for tonight. They are daytime creatures that need good light to watch for hungry things that eat ducks; they do not like to go out when it’s getting dark. The ducklings don’t have to eat right away to survive because they are nourished by a sac of egg yolk that remains inside them for about 2 days.

One of the mergansers was hatched, dry, and very active at 2:00pm yesterday so I really expected others to do that too. That would have them leave later than usual (morning is typical) because they need 20+ hours to get stronger after hatching – but still sometime today. I don’t remember a previous case where ducklings this active have stayed 2 nights, but probably the merganser was really early and most of the hatching yesterday didn’t occur until much later into the evening.

Quite often in the past when I’ve predicted something about their behavior they have proven me wrong. And now, again. This reminds me of advice a coworker provided about giving a presentation (which can crash, the projector can fail, the PA system can act up, etc.) He said it was best to never commit beyond saying “And now, watch this.”

Yet there is a prediction I can make with high confidence: they will leave tomorrow. Maybe early. How early? The sun comes up here at 5:37 and it might be bright enough sometime after 6:00 or so. But regarding the actual, probable time I’d have to say: And now, watch this.