We’ve been raising four little ducklings since April 11th. When we got them, they were only three of four days old. They were tiny and fragile little fuzzballs and I kept them indoors for more than a week so they wouldn’t get too cold at night in the garage.
They have grown fast. Their second week, we only let them swim in lasagna pans and we let them outside for about an hour a day. Even at such a young age, I was fascinated by the way they looked to the sky whenever a plane or a hawk flew over.
On April 22nd, we had a visit from a Cooper’s hawk while we were outside with them. The hawk touched down about 30 feet or so from us, probably looking for an easy mark by the feeders. He left empty-handed, but it was still a bold attack that shocked me a little.
Fast forward to three days ago. By now the ducks look almost like full-grown females. We have started letting them out in the yard to forage. They can’t fly yet, but their feathers are filling in nicely and they are practicing flapping a lot these days.
As birds go, these are big. They have most of their feathers now and we really can’t tell them apart anymore. We imagined a sharp-shinned hawk or a coopers probably wouldn’t bother with something this big. It would be entirely too heavy to fly off with, and it seems like a hawk would be wary about having to eat on the ground like that. We started to feel a little more secure about the safety of our little flock. This was a mistake.
It was about 4:00 in the afternoon. The sun was shining and I was stringing up tomatoes. About ten feet from me, the ducks are looking for bugs in the garden and all of the sudden I hear a loud quack. I look up to see a full-grown red-tailed hawk ON THE GROUND. I shouted “HEY” and immediately and started for the hawk to try to scare it away. I was thinking “Holy cow, you are huge.” The hawk noticed me right away and flew off – letting out a screech as it flew out of the yard. I had no idea what I was going to see when I looked down. Had one or more been killed or injured? How much damage should I expect? Broken bones? I imagined the worst.
To my surprise, all four ducks were moving toward their pen with haste. I could see that there was an injury though. One of them had a little bit of blood on its beak and was moving a little slower than the others. There were a couple of drops of blood on the ground.
Eventually, I was able to examine the injured duck to see if its life was in still in danger. It seemed to be strong, not really bleeding and in generally good shape – except for its left eye. I was so sad to see the injury. I was happy that it had apparently escaped the attack with its life, but it’s looking like there is permanent injury to its eye. I have no idea what will become of a one-eyed duck, but this one is definitely a lot easier to catch. I would imagine that flying is also going to be harder for Lucky as well.
For the time being, it’s almost back to business as usual, except that we are not letting them out of their pen alone, keeping them to the edges of the yard and looking at the sky all the time.
PS: Lucky is the only one whose name has stuck so far because it’s the only one we can really tell from the others. (It’s the one in the front of the picture above)