We’re going to be experimenting a bit here with a “weekend thread”—it’s Friday afternoon, and this thread will stay open until Monday AM.
It’s the weekend! Post what you’ve got going on!
Let’s hear about your house projects, the sunset you saw, your thoughts on which season is best (make sure to join a group! Team Fall has taken an overwhelming early lead!), or travels you might be going on.
I’ll kick it off: we’ve got a feral Muscovy nesting in our front flower bed! This is Smudgy Duck:
She’s sitting on a clutch of 13 eggs, lovingly if haphazardly covered with down and mulch. It’s kind of hard to see her from the porch camera, in part because she’s decided to build her nest behind a twiggy bush. The bush doesn’t seem to provide much shade or cover, but Muscovies make nesting decisions using duck-logic.
We keep a small dish of water on the porch for her to hydrate from (ducks get hot too!), but at least once each morning Smudgy will waddle up the driveway for some frozen peas and corn, and often her duck-baby-daddy will also make an appearance:
That’s Big Duck. He’s not terribly smart, but he’s super-happy whenever Smudgy lets him near her these days. She’s in full-on nesting/broody mode and does not find his neck-dance shenanigans anywhere near as attractive as she used to, before all those eggs.
I actually get up early now to make sure the bowl has clean water and fresh food each morning—I’m out there at 5:30 with the hose and the bag of frozen peas laying out the day’s spread. My wife has pointed out that the ducks’ training has been extremely effective and I am now their official duck servant, and, uh….I’m not sure she’s wrong.
So that’s my duck update (duckdate?). What’s going on with y’all? Please feel free to post (clean, work-safe!) images—if you’re on a computer, you can just drag them directly into the post window!
