Yesterday I was coming home from work, when I spied a mallard couple that have taken up residence in front of our building, in their usual spot. I’ll call them Mr. Duck and Mrs. Duck.
As I was locking my bike up I heard a rather agressive quacking and looked up to see another drake charging (okay, waddling) across the lawn towards Mr. Duck. Mr. Duck readily confronted him and the two pinched and pecked at each other while Mrs. Duck watched rather disinterestedly. At one point Mr. Duck got a good pinch right on the other drake’s butt, and to my amusement began to push him in my direction! It was like he was saying, “How dare you try to steal my wife…just for that I’m going to feed you to this human!”
When they were about 2 feet away from me, the drake chickened out, shook out of Mr. Duck’s grip and flew away, quacking angrily. Mr. Duck returned to his mate’s side and stood there looking rather proud of himself.
Guess it’s that time of year when animals (and humans) can get a bit twitterpated.
We had a trio of sharp-shinned hawks going at it over the weekend, but it was up in the air and it was hard to tell who was zoomin’ who. This is a mated pair who nest every year, but a third hawk was trying to insert himself (herself? dunno) into the equation. Lots of screeching and feathers flying, all at dinner time.
I wish I had a story half as entertaining as that one. The most I ever see is a squirrel going nuts (nuts, get it? HAHAHA!) or else being amusingly unafraid as I walk past.
Yeah what gives? Any time I’ve seen a mallard heading in the general direction of a girl duck the other blokes just kind of step aside and then hop on after the newcomer has had his way with her. Duck gang rapes I’ve seen, but never valor in a mallard.
Speaking of promiscuous ducks … I used to live in an apartment that overlooked a “lake” in the back. My boyfriend (now husband) and I were sitting on the balcony when we noticed quite a duck-ruckus. This one poor female was being chased by 6 or 8 drakes, and they each had their way with her as they caught up with her. I mean, sloppy seconds are supposed to be bad - can you imagine being the 8th?
I saw a duckfight once, too. They really seemed serious about it, but I don’t know that I’ve ever seen two more ill-equipped combatants. One of the would get a superior advantage, and try gumming the other one to death, and would every once in a while whap him with his wing(s). The one on the bottom would just sit there and take it, since it wasn’t like anything bad was happening. Then, something would happen, and the one on top would fall of, at which point they’s start flying up at each other, proudly displaying their wings. One would land on top of the other, and so it went for about 15 minutes.
Ducks tend to be absentee fathers too. I once saw a mother duck sailing down the creek behind my parents’ house with a long string of ducklings behind her. The daddy ducks were off by themselves chatting (quacking) to each other.
Hehe. Male duck chat. I can only imagine what they’d be saying.
Our ducks are pretty ballsy. If you walk past them they quietly scold you in quackerish, glaring at you with their cold-looking little pebbly eyes. They seem to get angrier when you laugh at them.
At least these ducks got to grow up enough to have duck fights! Some horrible, horrible person that I hold no claim to (my best friend’s wife)* hit a duck today.
It will never get to see ducklings, or fight for it’s “Mrs. Duck”. Damn carnivores.
*(She was really, really sad – almost crying, in fact. I didn’t know if I felt worse for her or the duck!)
I’d love to bet on duck fighting if it was still legal.
I’ve been watching the birds around my place lately. There’s a mockingbird who is looking HARD for a mate lately. It sounds like there’s 10 birds in the tree when he’s by himself. Anyway, I saw bird sitting on a branch and another bird just came right in at him and they started fighting. They were just a tangled mess of wings and feet as they fell towards the ground.
Well, they got about 8 feet from the ground and I swore they were going to crash, but at the last minute, they pulled out of it and went their separate ways. I imagined it was some bird version of “chicken”.
What do birds call it when they play chicken, anyway?
A few weeks ago, I was doing a site check at the north end of Pine Island. The property I needed to look at was gated and at the end of a cul-de-sac. So I parked in the side of the cul-de-sac and got out to ring the big doorbell on the gate. While I was waiting for someone to show up, I went back to the car to take in the great view of the area. As I got close to the car, I heard a strange fluttering and whacking sound from the other side of the vehicle. Sure enough, there was a female cardinal furiously attacking the side view mirror on the passenger side of the car. The male just sat in the bush and watched the avian catfight. But they flew away when I came too close. On a tangential note, one of the many noteworthy things about the property I was looking at was that it had an osprey nest on it’s roof and there was another nearby.
