Words4It

Warm days and cool evenings for the next three seasons keeps me in Michigan. I’m not fond of the region in winter but endure it because of the rest of the year.

Spring can be perfect. The mosquitoes are kept at bay by cold nights when flying is impossible for them, but a light jacket is all we need to remain toasty. When the sky glows at sunset, the air brings scents from flowering trees, and the lakes gently ripple, everything seems right with the world.

As shown in the previous post, drakes grab the head or neck and often rip out feathers during mating. If a female lacks a bonded partner who drives away other suitors, is particularly passive, or drakes out number hens significantly, hens can develop bare spots on their necks or heads. Sometimes, as previously shown on this blog, hens can be under so much mating stress they are repeatedly bloodied and have scabs for the entire mating season that lasts about three months. The wounds can lead to infection or death. This hen has lost a significant amount of feathers and has some bare skin showing. Feathers will grow back during the summer molt which follows the nesting period. Males low in the pecking order can also be victims of mating stress. More aggressive drakes will fight with them over territory or females and the head wounds can be severe.

By the end of March, most of the females had bonded with one or two drakes for the nesting season that was still more than a month away. One of the advantages of bonding is the protection their partners provide when rogue males attempt to mate with them. In past posts, I’ve mentioned that I’d never seen bonded drakes provide much protection. Since writing that, I have seen a few instances when drakes have driven off the unwanted advances of rogues who come calling. Most of the time, however, the bonded partners are ineffective and the visiting males press on regardless.

The Buff Orpington hen shown in these images has had two very attentive suitors throughout the mating season. They follow her everywhere, but when a Rouen male paid her a visit, they were helpless to thwart his advances. His size is a factor. Rouens look like giant Mallards weighing up to 12 pounds while the suitors are in the 7-8 pound range. After initial attempts to use force to get him to leave (above left), they gave up and stood nearby helpless (above right). The commotion of mating often draws a crowd. Some come to watch like this Canada goose (below left) but additional drakes will participate. The hens usually end the event. They break free without assistance. Then each of the ducks flap their wings to dissipate the adrenalin rush and go on with their lives. The suitors might join the aggressor in foraging in the area with no hard feelings.

You would think animals that can fly would understand gravity. I’ve seen evidence they just don’t get it. They  walk along the sidewalk beside the pond and fall in all of the time. This year, it seems eggs are toys rather than containers holding precious chicks. Either the ducks miscalculate gravity when they rotate them or some unknown critter visits nests just to roll eggs out of them. The eggs aren’t usually broken so they aren’t being moved by raccoons or skunks that dine on them. Instead, they show up a few feet away from their nest. Nice guy that I am, I moved this wayward egg (above) back to its hollow tree trunk nest (right). It didn’t help. The next night, both eggs were gone.

Many of us have been anticipating the arrival of the first brood of ducklings for a couple of weeks, but I regret that the first duckling on the pond was found dead. I searched extensively for other members of the brood with their mother, but couldn’t find them. I believe it’s a few days old rather than a newborn because of its size. Hypothermia is a major killer of young ducklings in their first two weeks of life. The nighttime temperatures below freezing probably killed this one. There are no signs of trauma or malnutrition on the body.

After several days of sun and 70 degree weather, Nature threw another Alberta Clipper at us. By Saturday night, the winds howled and the thermometer tumbled toward freezing. In 2012, a similar weather pattern severely harmed Michigan’s fruit tree crop. It’s too early to tell if this cold front has done similar damage. The ornamental flowering trees near the millpond were just in the process of opening their buds (above) but weren’t as far along as they were last year when a hard freeze ruined their chances of setting the fruit.