Day 138: May 17th- Mothers and their young

Beautiful sunshine, 71 degrees and calm

       It’s back to the Outdoor Discovery Center of the Hudson Highlands Nature Museum in Cornwall, NY.  I really did not have any idea as to what my targets were today or what the main theme of the day would be.  I decided to let nature take its course and dictate the path we’d follow. 

       When I first arrived and began my walk around the property, an old high school buddy of mine who now works as one of the groundsmen for the museum told me that the Killdeer on the property had their chicks and were easily found on the trail adjacent to the “Goose Pond”.  Suddenly, I had a theme.  As luck would have it, before I ever got to see the killdeer family, I ran into several Canada geese with their broods.  When the goslings are quite young, the parents can be very defensive and will hiss and lunge towards you if you approach.  Today, I was able to walk among them and raise little concern.  Apparently, these young were old enough to take care of themselves and the parents did not perceive me as any threat.

       Rounding the corner of the trail to where it fronts the pond, I found a mother Killdeer and two young.  It’s amazing how much the killdeer chicks look like their parents.  They quickly achieve a good size and are capable of feeding themselves at an early age.  Still, this mother was cautious.  When I drew near, she would call to her young, but did not flee.  She did, however, keep herself between me and the young ones.   When the chicks are very young and are still in the nest, killdeer are famous for feigning injury and will drag themselves away from the nest to entice any predator into chasing them and leaving the nest alone.  I saw none of this, today, so obviously, this mother felt that these chicks are big enough and strong enough to not be in any great danger.

       Moving on down to the next two ponds, I was startled by a Wood duck hen literally blasting from cover and plunging into the pond on my right.  

       As I photographed her, my first thought was that indeed she had been injured, for when she swam away from me, she thrashed about violently.  It then occurred to me that perhaps this was another distraction display that I had expected from the killdeer but had not seen.  As she struggled away from me, making a plaintiff cry in the process, I noticed back in the pond to my left, eight ducklings swimming out from under the cover of vegetation.  I moved away from the group and noticed that Mom was swimming along quite nicely now…..no injury. 

 

        Unfortunately, as I surveyed the pond further, I noticed that it was not me that the mother Wood duck should have feared.  A far greater danger was sunning itself on a rock in the middle of the pond.  A fairly large snapping turtle seemed to not be interested in the ducklings for the moment.  But young waterfowl do serve as a main course in the diet of these turtles, and I had to wonder how many of these little Wood ducks would make it to maturity.

   

      And so, spring is here in full bore and nature is replenishing its stock.  I enjoyed watching so much motherly care for each of these three species’s offspring by the parent.