New animal of the week...

Was just out in the backyard a short while ago, doing a rush planting of seeds and seedlings in one of the raised veggie beds and supervising the cats, when I heard some high-pitched squawking. Looking up, I saw a couple smaller ducks fly out of the woods on the back corner by the pond, out over the pond, and down the length of the woods behind the houses on our street. Seemed like they were following the treeline, as they curved around the corner of the woods where it follows the curve of the road.

Well, that was interesting. Continued hanging out with the cats, and a few minutes later more squawking and a couple splashes. I couldn't resist the temptation to go sneak a peek - I could tell where they'd landed in the water by the ripples, so I just made sure the compost bin was between me and the ducks as I snuck back to the pond.

As I gathered from their overhead flight, they were a little smaller than the mallards I've seen around here, and the patterns were different. Even without my glasses on and at the distance I was watching them from, and definitely without the aid of the old binoculars mom and dad brought or my 16x digital zoom camera, I could see there were some very bright white patterns on them, and what looked to be a red area where the male's eye was. Hm. I don't know my ducks very well, but it was an easy enough visual to come in and search through the Birds of Ohio book (which, it turns out, only has one duck under the letter D!) Here's what I found:


Sorry, none of these pics were taken by me - all ripped off the web.

We've got wood ducks! The pic above pretty much looks like the pair in the back yard - obviously one male (the more ornate) and one female (the less ornate). Reading the description pretty much describes what I saw/heard - they're known for flying in and around woodlands (I thought it was odd to see ducks flying out of the woods!), and for the female to take flight with a "loud squealing call"...yup, that's about right! (Actually, the sound you can hear on the rightbird web site isn't QUITE what I heard in the backyard - she wasn't as high-pitched as the online example. Thankfully.)


And I wasn't kidding about being smaller than the mallards I'm used to seeing - according to Birds of Ohio, Wood Ducks (Aix sponsa) males run 17-20", and Mallards (Anas platyrhynchos) are more like 27-28" (not as much variability in the Mallard's size apparently!).

What's interesting is the females will lay their eggs in abandoned woodpecker holes in trees, with some clutches in excess of 20 eggs! And then the ducklings only stay in the nest about 24 hrs after hatching, and will then jump up to 30 feet to the ground or water, following their mother from the nest, never to return!

So, here's hoping the new couple will find a suitable abandoned woodpecker nest around here (I know about where there's at least one), and later this spring it'll be raining ducklings!


In other animal news here at the back 40, I've been a mean landlord. We still had the two fake trees in fake urns out on the front porch. Sure, they're intended for Christmas decoration but without the lights they didn't look TOO Christmassy (a matter of personal opinion), and I thought it was nice to have some decoration on the front porch.

Well, the other morning I noticed a finch was building a nest in the tree outside the dining room window. We agreed that wouldn't do - that the trees would need to come in, and we wanted to discourage the birds from settling in and laying eggs there (no eggs yet - nest wasn't complete), so I took out the nest and put in the live Norway spruce in the front flower bed (I don't know if a bird will notice it or find it desirable - it's worth a shot). That was Saturday morning.

Sunday at lunch we noticed a male house finch sitting on the front gutter watching something over by the front door. Sure enough, a female flew past it and was working on a nest in the other tree. The same birds? I don't know.... This nest wasn't as far along as the first nest, but you could still tell it was a nest - could they have gotten this far with another one so quickly? Or could we have had two finch families on the front porch if we hadn't taken action?

So, evil bastard that I am (Brett made me do it!), I took out the new nest, which pretty much fell apart in my hands, and brought in the two temptuous trees, which are now down in the basement.

I need to see if I can find something for them to nest in out there...if they haven't given up on us! The nests my brother made us aren't quite suitable for sticking on the front of the house, nor do I know if these birds would want them...

Oh - and another surprise - there are frogs already! We're due for some more freezing temps this week, and there were frogs chirping across the street, and I THINK small frogs hopping into our pond when I was out planting stuff in the raised beds. Speaking of which - HOPEFULLY it's not too soon to start peas, sugar snap peas, snow peas, a rainbow of carrots, a small selection of old lettuce seeds, spinach (including a red-veined variety - cool!), annnnnd some of the lettuce and parsley seedlings I'd started in the basement. I'm playing some SERIOUSLY tough love on the seedlings - which is why I only took out a VERY small selection - they didn't get hardened off or anything. Now lettuce and parsley are pretty cold hardy, but it's probably too rough just sticking them out there like that - we'll see. I made sure to only plant some of each of the seeds above, so that that way I can go out a week or so later and do some succession planting....stagger the growth and (if any of them come up) harvest! Fingers crossed!