April 23, 2001
For the Birds
A threat to the local Audubon Society expert I am not. If I had any doubt of this, it was driven home this weekend.
Allow me to explain. The little guys on the right showed up in our yard on Saturday. They're absolutely adorable, like puppies. They follow each other around and sleep in a cuddled heap. What none of us could figure out, however, was what exactly they were. They looked a little like baby ducks, but were much too big to be babies, and were the wrong color to be adults. It was a mystery.
Around one or two that afternoon, I grabbed my camera and went outside to take pictures of the mystery waterfowl. They didn't seem afraid of me, and let me get fairly close. While I was taking pictures, they wandered into the lake and I crept closer, by now nearly wading in the water myself.
That's when something interesting happened. As I got close to the little ones, this guy came zooming from across the center of the lake and floated ominously nearby, swimming in so close it scared my mom, who thought the swan was going to attack me. Out of the water came the little ones, and I went inside. Aha, we surmised, the little ones must be baby swans. That was puzzling as well, however. They were still fairly big, and rather than being ugly, they're cute and yellowish-white. Not only that, but as we watched through the day, it became apparent that the larger swan was chasing the little ones out of the water, and seemed to be herding them along the shore.
The internet to the rescue! A few quick web searches, and the mystery was solved. The little ones were, in fact, the offspring of the swan (which is a mute swan, to be specific), born last spring. Now, because the swan's mating season is approaching, momma (or daddy, we can't tell which) swan was chasing the little ones away to prepare the nest for the next hatching.
Feeling especially pleased with myself (and having retained my crown as the web research goddess), I wasted no time sharing the information with my mother and my stepfather, the latter of whom was a bit skeptical. Still, the pieces seemed to fit.
Sunday morning. Mom and I were sitting out on the deck overlooking the lake, watching the baby swans. The sun was shining and it was just warm enough to be comfortable in shirt sleeves. As we watched, with the swan staying out in the center of the lake, a woman from a few houses down came wading along the lake shore. She waved cheerfully at us as she came into the yard and called, "I'm just checking on my ducks! They wandered down this way." Sure enough, the "baby swans" started a plaintive mournful quacking around the woman's bare feet. They're farm ducks whose mother was hit by a car. To judge by their behavior, they've decided that this woman is mom.
I looked at my mom. She looked at me. We burst into giggles. "They're ducks?" I asked. "We weren't sure, because that swan out there seems protective of them."
"Oh no," the woman said, "the swan found out that I put out corn for the ducks, so he's been chasing them away from my house."
Oh. Oops. So much for my career as a wildlife expert.
Posted by Lisa at April 23, 2001 10:15 AM
