Make Way for Ducklings
Based on the calls coming in to WildCare's Living with Wildlife Hotline 415-456-7283, everyone is seeing ducklings right now!
Mallards lay their eggs in what seem to us to be the strangest places. We've had reports of duck nests in construction zones, on the medians of busy roads, and next to backyard swimming pools.
Who knows why the mother duck chooses the spot she does, but she will steadily incubate her eggs until they hatch all together. Then she must take her fluffy ducklings on an often-dangerous journey to find water!
Cover photo by Heidi Law
Photo © nd700 / Adobe Stock
In the video below, you can see rescued ducklings having a therapeutic swim while the Wildlife Hospital volunteers clean their brooder.
For the swim session, a bin is filled with warm water and the ducklings are set inside to float and paddle. They seem to enjoy it! In the wild, ducklings of this age would be following their mother in and out of ponds and streams, so the urge to swim is a natural one.
The swim helps keep the ducklings clean (ducklings in care are very messy), and allows them to work on their waterproofing. Once back in their brooder, these little ducks will spend hours preening themselves, beginning the life-long process of keeping feathers oiled and in perfect position to maintain buoyancy and body temperature.
Although a caring rescuer had stopped to help them cross the street, the chaos of cars and pedestrians at the intersection caused several of these ducklings to fall into a storm drain.
With the mother duck frantically calling nearby, their enterprising rescuer managed to access the drain and use her tennis racket to lift the peeping ducklings to safety!
The mother duck waited until nearly all the ducklings had been rescued, but she led the family away before the last one could be brought up on the tennis racket. Their rescuer couldn't find the family to reunite the final little one, so she brought him to WildCare.
Then, a few hours later WildCare received a call that a neighbor had found more of the ducklings under his house... this had clearly been a very chaotic trip for this Mallard family!
Dangers for Ducklings
Ducklings are born precocial, meaning that they can walk, swim and eat adult food almost as soon as they emerge from the egg. Mallards lay as many as ten eggs, and when the babies hatch, they must immediately get busy following their mother as she leads them to water.
That journey can be a perilous one.
A mother duck makes a gentle clucking noise to keep her brood together, and the babies peep in response. But ducks can’t count, so if a duckling gets separated from his family, the mother duck won’t notice that he’s missing if he’s out of sight and she can’t hear his peeping.
Photo © madscinbca / Adobe Stock
Mallard moms are attentive to their babies, but if a duckling gets separated from his family group, he needs help!
If you find a solo duckling, call WildCare’s Living with Wildlife Hotline at 415-456-SAVE (7283) for instructions to safely contain him. That little one will likely need immediate care, so you will need to bring him to WildCare or your closest wildlife care center.
Just make sure you DON’T open the box once you have the duckling contained, as ducklings can jump surprisingly high and he will end up loose in your car!
With mother ducks everywhere leading their broods to water, keep an eye out for family groups navigating dangerous situations like street crossings! Give wildlife a “brake” and lots of space in situations like these. If it’s safe for you to do so, helping keep cars, bicycles and pedestrians back from the duck family can save many tiny lives.
Photo © Marianne Hale
It’s also easy for wildlife like ducklings to become trapped in backyard pools. In-ground pools are built with walls above the water line that make it easy to get into the water but impossible for non-flighted little ones to get back out. If you don’t want wildlife visitors to your pool, keeping it covered is the best solution.
Alternatively, you can provide easy-out ramps for trapped wildlife. A product called a FrogLog is a good option. It is a floating styrofoam platform attached to a fabric ramp that is weighted with a sand bag. Plastic or wooden ramps (braced so they don’t float away) are an easy-to-construct alternative. Be sure to place several ramps or FrogLogs on opposite sides of the pool, as a desperate duckling won’t know to swim around the pool to get out on the other side.
Photo by JoLynn Taylor
Raising Ducklings
WildCare admits over 150 Mallard ducklings a year. These babies are challenging to raise in a rehab setting because they can habituate to humans very easily. To mitigate this, the babies are always raised as a group (single ducklings will get depressed and often stop eating if left alone too long), and contact with humans is strictly kept to a minimum. Volunteers in the Wildlife Hospital clean the ducklings' incubator, supply their food, and weigh them all at the same time to minimize contact.
In the wild, the youngest still-fluffy ducklings depend on Mom to thermoregulate (control their body temperature) by huddling underneath her when cold. Orphans at WildCare are kept in an incubator to provide the warmth they need while they are still small and fluffy. Once old enough and able to thermoregulate, they're transferred to a brooder containing a heat lamp, water source, food plate containing "waterfowl starter" and lots of leafy greens, and often a feather duster to give them something to snuggle against that feels like mom.
As these little birds grow and develop they are transferred from brooders to larger cages containing water pools for swimming.
After several months, these Mallards will be released back to the wild.
A mother Mallard has her job cut out for her as soon as her babies hatch!
Ducklings are born precocial, meaning they can walk, run and even swim very soon after hatching.
The mother Mallard will wait for all of her ducklings to hatch, and then she will lead them off to find water, quacking quietly to keep her fluffy brood in line.
Honor the wonderful moms in your life with a donation to WildCare, and then send an adorable eCard featuring a beautiful wildlife mom and baby!
Donating to support WildCare in honor of Mom is a very special way to say, "I love and appreciate you," while helping the many orphaned wild animals in the Wildlife Hospital right now.
Photo by Marianne Hale
Wildlife Tip: Don't feed the ducks! (Or if you do, feed them lettuce)
For many families, feeding ducks seems like a great way to connect with nature and teach kids about animals. Besides, the ducks love bread, right? Yes, but bread is as bad for ducks as Twinkies or other junk food are for kids.
Ducks fed primarily on bread by humans (like those at the Marin Civic Center) are often admitted to WildCare with the symptoms of malnutrition and some even die from the condition.
So what should you do? Ideally, WildCare recommends not feeding any wildlife, but if you really want to feed the ducks, please feed them what we offer them in the Wildlife Hospital-- Romaine lettuce and other leafy greens!
Photo by Susan Miller