Free ranging Ducks and Geese

by gloria scholbe
December 2001

It all began with Gandalf, an African Brown gander (male goose) who came to live here a couple years ago. The following year, a White Embden gander named Daisy, and three ducks came to join him. After half the summer had passed, neither the ducks nor the geese had tried the pond. I was a little disappointed, so one day I herded them down to the pond's bank and chased them into the water with a feather duster on a long pole. They were more afraid of the water than they were of me and my strange 'weapon', so they exploded out of the water in total panic.

I rounded them up and chased them back in twice more that day. The next two days we performed the same routine, and then finally the ducks realized they liked the water. Following their example, the geese stayed too. Part of the problem was that all of these birds had been raised on dry land. The only water they had previously experienced was contained in water buckets.

The ducks quickly learned to swim and soon became adept at diving under the water and digging in the mud. Poor Gandalf and Daisy, on the other hand, did not swim well at all. Daisy could barely stay afloat. It wasn't until the end of summer that I finally saw them dive and swim under water. They really enjoyed swimming underneath each other and coming up on the other side.

Daisy and Gandalf became great pals and went everywhere together. In spring there were a few problems with fighting because of heightened hormones, but once the mating season was over, they settled down and once more were friends.

Spring also signaled breeding season to the ducks, who decided to go to nest. There were two hens and a drake. The Runner hen laid her eggs in the shed, but the geese kept chasing her off of her nest and stepping on the eggs. The Brown hen laid her eggs in the weeds near the pond. A mallard hen laid her eggs somewhere around there too.

The first eggs to hatch belonged to the Brown hen. When I saw tiny yellow dots bobbing along behind her on the pond, I ran to get my field glasses. Gandalf loved those baby ducks and became very protective of them. In fact, he abandoned his relationship with Daisy so he could delight in the baby ducks.

Daisy was devastated and left the pond. He came up by the house and laid under the lilac bush. Except to eat and drink, he didn't do much for the next couple ofl weeks. He was unaware when the Mallard chicks hatched. Now Gandalf had twenty babies to care for and he was in heaven.

Meanwhile, the Runner hen laid another clutch of eggs in the shed. Since Gandalf was occupied and Daisy didn't care about anything, she successfully incubated her eggs until they hatched. I knew they had hatched and ventured out of the shed because Daisy and the hen were setting up a big commotion in the yard. Daisy wanted the babies and the hen was trying to keep them from him.

I herded her and her babies into a fenced half-acre of delectable weeds that had a shelter because the geese always picked on her a little and I wanted her to be able to raise her babies in peace. They stayed there until the babies were a few weeks old. Although I was putting feed out for them, they never touched it. Yet, the babies I checked were fat and healthy. They were doing well by foraging for bugs and weeds.

The ducks at the pond didn't touch the feed I put out for them until they were several weeks old. By then, they should have been running out of foraged food with more than twenty ducks and ducklings on the pond.

Now it was time to herd the Runner hen and her chicks down to the pond. Daisy had finally gone down to the pond to mope around the other ducklings from a distance. When I guided the Runner hen and her babies into the pond, though, he sprang to life. At first I thought he was going to hurt those babies because he was so aggressive to them. He bit them and chased them. What he was really doing was herding them away from their mother. He took them over, and after a couple of days, he let the hen join her brood. Soon he was protecting all of them.

It was amusing to watch Gandalf and his twenty stay separate from Daisy and his ten. The geese decided when it was time to herd the babies out of the pond and into the weeds to forage or rest. They were totally in control of the ducks. What really surprised me was that out of thirty some ducklings, I lost only one baby shortly after it hatched. I think Gandalf must have stepped on it because I found it dead on the path. I didn't lose any ducklings to predators of any kind even though there are hawks, owls, skunks, raccoons, and fox in the area.

When Autumn came, the Mallards flew away.

A  highlight of this "Duckling Summer " was observing the mallard hen swim to the bank and watch her ten baby ducklings climb onto her back, after which she slipped quickly into the weeds and disappeared.

And I'll never forget Daisy's joy when he finally had a brood of 'his own' to teach and lead.