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The ducklings started hatching this morning and continuing into early afternoon. I just finished setting up the outside camera so that tomorrow morning you can watch the action both inside and outside. As usual, for details about viewing the cameras and links to them, go to the main birdsgv.com page. I’ve added a special block of information about using two browser windows.

What to expect tomorrow:

• Momma duck has been going out for breakfast early: 6:00am or so, usually for about a half hour. She’ll probably do that tomorrow too.
• When she gets back she and the ducklings will rest for a while.
• The earliest that we’ve ever seen the ducklings jump was just before 7:00, the latest was at around 1:00 in the afternoon. Usually they leave about 8:00 or 9:00.
• When she thinks that the going might be good, she’ll jump up into the entrance and watch. She’s checking for predators or anything that might harm the ducklings. Sometimes she watches for 10 minutes, sometimes for just a couple.
• She’ll then either decide to drop down below the nest and call the ducklings or will go back inside to rest for a while. Sometimes this repeats many times. Sometimes it doesn’t repeat at all.
• As soon as she’s below the nest she makes a soft pulsing call. The ducklings react by peeping loudly and jumping up the sides of the nest box toward the door (or to wherever they think the door might be).
• Once up, the ducklings sometimes sit in the door for while but sometimes will leap right away.
• After they all have jumped – the mother knows this because there’s no more peeping from the nest box – the mother will lead them away toward the creek.
• From when she starts calling until they are gone is usually only a few minutes.

When I checked the west nest yesterday one of the nine eggs was “pipped”, which is the term describing the small cracked spot made by the ducklings 24 to 48 hours before they hatch. In my experience it has been closer to 24. This evening all 9 of them were that way and, I think, even farther along – see the picture below. They might be hatching tonight. We’ll see.

They’ll either hatch tonight and early tomorrow and jump on Saturday morning, or if they start hatching late tomorrow they’ll be jumping on Sunday morning. The ducklings need roughly 24 hours after hatching to dry out, exercise, absorb egg yolk, and get big and strong enough to follow their mother.

When a duckling starts pecking a day or two before ever breaking the shell, it first punctures a membrane inside the egg that separates an air pocket from the duckling. It still gets virtually all of what it needs from egg yolk but it does use the air pocket to start to exercise its lungs and will even use this air to make little peeping sounds inside the egg before it hatches. I’ve heard this and would like to record it someday so you can hear it too but I’m not sure how – maybe a small microphone in there. It’s a very tiny sound.

When the duckling does pip (break through) the eggshell that lets more air in, but after breaking a small spot nothing visible changes on the egg for about a day. Then, when ready to hatch, the duckling starts to peck and then rest, and then do that some more as it gradually – it takes hours – turns itself around inside the egg by pushing with its wings and feet. Finally when it has broken a complete circle the shell falls in half and it’s out. The duckling still has nourishing egg yolk (inside its body somewhere) to absorb after it hatches and in just hours it changes from a tiny wet blob into an active fluffy duckling.

I caught all of the hens away from their nests yesterday, so I was able to open all three of the nest boxes and check. I especially wanted to check the west nest, which will hatch soon, to see if the eggs are “pipped” (slightly cracked from inside) since the little ducklings do that about 24 hours before they hatch. It gives us an early warning. They were not.

I used a candling setup to inspect each egg in all three nests. It’s called “candling” because in the past it was done with a candle. Since electricity has now been invented, I use a flashlight.

West nest – Wood duck – hatching May 1st (+/- 3 days)
I’ll try to check each day in the coming week to detect when we expect them to hatch. This nest now has 9 eggs after removing 4 that were very undeveloped and had no chance of hatching with the others.

East nest – Wood duck – hatching May 13 (+/- 3 days)
Many eggs have been “dumped” (layed by other ducks) in the east nest. It now has 15 eggs after I removed 4 that were very undeveloped compared to the others.

South nest – Hooded merganser – hatching May 17 (+/- 3 days)
The merganser has 11 eggs and candling showed them all at the same stage of development.

Last below is an update about the three nest boxes (live cameras here) but first …

A few weeks ago I was contacted by Russel Kogan who is a professional video editor at The Dodo:

The Dodo for animal people
The Dodo’s goal is to serve up emotionally and visually compelling, highly sharable animal-related stories and videos to as many people as possible to help make caring about animals a viral cause.

I agreed that he could create a video for The Dodo using excerpts from mine. Russel created a very good 3 minute video that went live a couple of days ago. He recorded an online interview with me and used that audio to provide the narration and I am even on camera for a few seconds. The Dodo has millions of YouTube subscribers and after a couple of days the video already has about 200,000 views there, plus I-don’t-know-how-many-more views via The Dodo’s Facebook and Instagram accounts. Here’s a link to the YouTube instance. I hope you enjoy it!

Nest box update

All three of the hens have been in their nest boxes most of the day and all night. I expect the hatching estimates from my previous post (included below) to be about right, although the hooded merganser in the south nest box might be a day or so later than that first estimate.

West nest – Wood duck – hatching May 1st (+/- 3 days)
There are 15 eggs as of yesterday. Several times we’ve watched via the camera’s recordings as some other hen invades to dump an egg (I’ve posted several videos of that: one of them is here). These won’t hatch with the others. I think she started with 10 although when I finally caught her away from the nest after she started incubating, and could count them, there were 12.

East nest – Wood duck – hatching May 13 (+/- 3 days)
There are now 11 eggs in this nest box. She started with 10 but another was added by some other hen more recently.

Green eggs (and ham?)
If you’re watching the East or West nest box camera when a hen moves you may notice some green blotches on the wood duck eggs. I marked those that were in the nest just after incubation started using a small dot of green food color (harmless), to improve my understanding of which ones hatch and which ones don’t. I used pencil last year which didn’t work because it faded away completely. In a few cases I got more green food color on an egg than I intended and even for those with just a small dot it has subsequently spread out into a blotch. (I hope we don’t have any green ducklings!)

South nest – Hooded merganser – hatching May 17 (+/- 3 days)
I’ve extended her hatch day by one since she was not full-time on the nest during the first day or so that I thought she was, and she added another egg during that time too. There are now 11 eggs. Sometimes a hen will rest in the nest box overnight without actually heating the eggs very much (she hasn’t plucked down, doesn’t nestle down) if she’s still laying. Then when she’s all done with that she starts. It is when the eggs are kept warm that development begins and thus, even though the first egg will be about 2 weeks older than the last one, they all start to develop at the same time and they all hatch together.