Jump day = <your guess here>

04Jun

I wish these ducklings had more respect for us viewers and would hatch overnight as any polite and considerate batch of ducklings would do! But they’re mostly out now at 4:00pm CDT and looking very active and strong. I’ve seen at least one egg that is still hatching and at least one that probably won’t. This is starting to seem like a repeat of the East nest 2 weeks ago when all of us watched for a whole day because they might go, but then they didn’t and stayed overnight again and jumped very early the next morning.

Ducklings need about 20 hours or so in the nest box to get strong enough to leave. So doing the math: afternoon + 20 says it could be late tomorrow morning (or maybe not so late? see the “about” and “or so” in the previous sentence). Only momma duck knows and she hasn’t decided yet.

I can say with complete confidence that they will jump either tomorrow or Friday. Sorry. Best I can do with ducklings that hatch during the day. I’m sending this to let you know that I don’t know!

Some of you probably saw me cleaning the lenses and resetting the camera a short time ago. I don’t know why the color image is so hazy. For now I’ve set it to stay in grayscale mode.

I’m going to enable the outdoor camera for you to see.

I took this picture by putting the top of my phone through the nest box door at about 4:05pm CDT. All five of them on the right and at the top are hooded mergansers. Two sleepy ones on the left are wood ducks. There are more under the pile: looks like maybe two on the top left and one whose bottom is bottom center. Two wood duck eggs that have not yet hatched are on the left.

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