Jump day = Friday (probably)

04Jun

This morning after a quick look at an egg or two as the duck moved momentarily, it looked like several were hatching … and they are. By late today/tonight there should be lots of little ducks. However when she left for breakfast a half hour ago I opened the nest box, moved the shavings aside, and found that many of the eggs are not as far along . I now expect they will hatch today and into this evening/overnight, which means they won’t be ready to go tomorrow morning as I previously suggested. I should just stop doing that! But I’ll do it again anyway: I think they’ll be ready to leave Friday morning.

As I gently rotated some of the eggs in-place to get the photo below the little ducks inside them made tiny peep peep sounds. They talk to their mother and she talks back before they hatch.

In the back eggs are starting to hatch, but others are only pipped, such as the darker wood duck egg on the upper right and the merganser egg that is closest. I didn’t turn all of them over for this photo; the others are a similar mix. (The black dot on the one on the left is a marker dot that I put on all of the eggs a month ago to identify those that were in the nest when incubation started vs. any that were added later by other ducks.)

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