It's spring, which means ducklings. Yes, even if they are Muscovy ducklings. They're cute until they start to fledge.
Mama Cooley and her brood was caught on camera last week:
Here they are again on Memorial Day -
While all looks well, if you count up the ducklings, she's down one. This inexorable decline in number will continue. And morbid as it may be, we'll be keeping watch around the bend.
Time will tell if she's as successful as Mama Argyle, who got half her brood to fledge.
Of course, they aren't so cuddly at this adolescent age.
So why are they called Muscovy ducks? "Muscovy" means "of Moscow," and yet these birds are not from Russian, they are native to South and Central America. It's actually a bastardization of its latin name, cairina moschata, which means "the musky one from Cairo." Yes, even in 1793, when the thing was first classified, they got its homeland wrong.
But they got the musk part right; you can always tell when a Muscovy duck has been hanging around.
BTW, despite their patch color, these are all pure-breed ducks. The species has always had that patchwork look to them.
Mama Cooley and her brood was caught on camera last week:
Here they are again on Memorial Day -
While all looks well, if you count up the ducklings, she's down one. This inexorable decline in number will continue. And morbid as it may be, we'll be keeping watch around the bend.
Time will tell if she's as successful as Mama Argyle, who got half her brood to fledge.
Of course, they aren't so cuddly at this adolescent age.
So why are they called Muscovy ducks? "Muscovy" means "of Moscow," and yet these birds are not from Russian, they are native to South and Central America. It's actually a bastardization of its latin name, cairina moschata, which means "the musky one from Cairo." Yes, even in 1793, when the thing was first classified, they got its homeland wrong.
But they got the musk part right; you can always tell when a Muscovy duck has been hanging around.
BTW, despite their patch color, these are all pure-breed ducks. The species has always had that patchwork look to them.
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