Spring is an amazing time of year filled with all the hope and promise of life in the natural world. As a wildlife photographer I am privilege to witness first hand the awaking of spring and the miracle of birth of many tiny birds and fuzzy animals.
I am continually amazed when I see these miracles occur. Take the Wood Duck for instance. Just about everything about their reproduction is amazing. To start, they are a duck that nests in the trees. I must admit it’s makes me laugh when I see a pair of Wood Duck’s landing 50 or 60 feet up in a large oak or maple tree and walk around the branches. They just don’t look like they belong up there with their large floppy web feet desperately clinging to the branches. Truth is, they have sharp nails that help them grip the bark.
The mother Wood Duck searches out a natural cavity with an entrance that is often so small she can barely squeeze in. However they also use wooden man-made nest boxes. Here is where she will lay her eggs, one egg a day, for up to ten days before she settles in to incubate. Just before the last egg is laid, she will meticulously pluck the soft down feathers from her breast to line the nest to help keep her eggs warm.
For many years I have installed a micro camera into several Wood Duck nests and have watched the miracle of hatching first hand. I find endless hours of discovery and education. Now this is real, reality TV.
Not only do Wood Ducks use cavities to nest but so do Hooded Merganser. Hoodies a tree nesting duck. This year I watched several Hooded Merganser mothers enter my Wood Duck nest boxes and lay eggs. The mergansers eggs look very similar to the Wood Ducks. In addition, several Wood Duck mothers will also lay their eggs in the nest along with the Hooded Mergansers resulting in a nest box consisting of 20 to 30 eggs from several Wood Duck and Hooded Merganser mothers. Let me tell you it’s a real challenge for the resident mother Wood Duck to incubate this mountain of eggs.
For a month the mother Woodie sits on her pile of eggs transferring her body heat to the developing eggs. Slowly the baby woodies develop within the confines of the egg. When it’s hatching time the young ducks nearly fill the space within the egg. Using a pointed projection or knob on the tip of their upper bill, called an egg tooth, the baby woodie slowly scrapes a tiny hole in egg shell. This is called pipping. The baby duck is now just hours away from joining the world.
As soon as several of the eggs pip, my mother woodie starts to poke her bill into the openings in the eggs and literally bites off sections of the egg shell. Taking ten to fifteen minutes each, the mother slowly eats about half the shell off the first hatchlings. I watched as she vigorously consumed the shells often inadvertently shaking the baby duck out of its shell. Presumably she is consuming the eggs shells to regain all of the precious calcium she used to produce the eggs.
Over the next 6 or more hours all of the ducklings hatch. At first they are wet and completely exhausted from their ordeal. They lay helpless beneath the mother until they are dry and able to stand on their feet. This is when it becomes fun to watch as up to a dozen (not all the eggs hatch) tiny fluffy ducklings climb up and all over their mother. They clammier around on their mother’s back stepping on each other as they jockey for space in the cramped cavity.
What I found interesting is the first two babies to hatch where Hooded Merganser chicks. I could tell by their large round puffy head and long narrow beak. Once all the chicks hatch the mother waits about 24 hours before leading her ducklings out into the world.
Early in the morning, right at dawn, the mother woodie leaves her nest cavity and flies to the ground below the nest. She calls to her chicks that are by now very anxious to follow their mother. One by one the babies crawl up the inside of the cavity to reach the entrance and for the first time in their lives peer out into the world.
The first major task in each of these ducklings life is to jump to the ground below. Some nests can be as high as 60 feet. Each duckling jumps and tumbles to the earth below, often flipping and spinning before reaching the ground. The fluffy birds are so light that they bounce as the hit the ground. They quickly recover and run to their mothers side. Once all of the young have jumped she will lead them to the water and to a life of being a tree duck. Until next time…