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Mallard ‘Moving day’
(by Kathryn A. Burger - June 17, 2008)
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Staff Photos By Kathryn A. Burger
This is the third spring that this one-legged mother mallard has nested in the courtyard at Montvale’s Memorial School. She and her eight ducklings were relocated to Huff Park last week. Look carefully and see that she is balancing on her one orange leg.
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For the third year in a row, a mallard mother chose an enclosed flowerbed at Memorial School as her preferred nesting spot. Last week, eight downy, chirping ducklings hatched.
Diane Klein, a secretary at Memorial, had been keeping her eye on the nesting site and reported the arrival of the octet. The walled bed is in one corner of a rarely used courtyard at the school. The courtyard is surrounded on all sides by the school building, and although open to the elements, provides a reasonably safe place for a nest. The raised, walled bed provides an additional measure of security.
Last year, the school called Tyco Animal Control who came and rounded up the mother and her ducklings and relocated them to nearby Huff Pond, Klein said. Tyco told her they get lots of calls at this time of year about similar incidents and recommend removing the eggs from the nest. This year, Klein decided not to follow that piece of advise and instead wait until the ducklings hatched and then relocated the family to the pond since she doubted Tyco would pay another visit.
Last Wednesday was to be “moving day” and although things didn’t go exactly as planned, the family was eventually moved to the pond on Friday.
At about 7:45 Wednesday morning, Klein along with Vito Occhpinti, the school custodian who had also been keeping tabs on the duck and providing fresh water and food, put their plan into action: first, secure the mother duck and then round up the ducklings and release them at Huff Pond. It was a good plan but the mother duck saw things differently.
She didn’t take kindly to Occhipinti as he tried to catch her in a large net. Her ducklings, forming a tight group, and chirping like mad, followed her back and forth as she tried to evade the net. Watching her movements, she appeared to be lame. When she tried to run, she fell to her side with each attempted step then righted herself momentarily before falling over again, after making little forward progress. When asked if she was injured, Klein said she noticed last year that the duck had only one leg.
When the mother proved difficult to snare, Occhipinti concentrated on netting the ducklings. A crate lined with paper served to hold them. Though the mother had great difficulty walking, she proved to be an excellent flier. She rose up out of the bed and landed on the grass in courtyard. Occhipinti and Klein worked together and got all eight ducklings into the box. So far so good.
Then, the mother took off, soaring out of the courtyard and out of sight. The ducklings were now huddled in a silent, downy bunch in one corner of the box. In hopes of attracting the mother with the chirps of her babies, it was decided to bring the ducklings to Huff Pond. Once on the school grounds, Klein put down the box and gently took a duckling in each hand and held them up. They chirped, but after flying over once, the mother duck disappeared.
At the pond, it was decided it wasn’t safe to leave the ducklings there on their own so after waiting in vain for several minutes for the mother to return, the ducklings were taken back to the courtyard and released into the flowerbed. Now it was just a question of whether the mother would return.
Occhipinti filled a large aluminum pan with water and placed in the flowerbed with the ducklings. There was nothing to do now but leave the courtyard and wait. At least the ducklings were safe. Or were they? While scanning the sky one more time before leaving the area, a hawk was spotted perched on the school roof. No doubt attracted by the chirps of the ducklings, it, too, seemed to be scanning the skies and then turning in the direction of the courtyard.
There was nothing to be done. The hawk could have just as easily targeted the ducklings with the mother present and perhaps had tried in the few days since the ducklings hatched. The mother would certainly have put up a fight, but in a match between one-legged duck versus a healthy hawk, the odds would be on the hawk.
Occhipinti checked on the ducklings during the morning, once finding all of them in the aluminum pan, paddling around and around.
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Diane Klein, a secretary at the school, gently holds one of the eight ducklings.
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Happily, later that day the mother returned to the flowerbed and all eight ducklings were there to welcome her. And on Friday, Klein and Occhipinti successfully relocated the family to Huff Pond where they were last seen gliding across the pond in their own little formation.
When it comes to wildlife, human intervention, however well-intentioned, can sometimes do more harm that good. This encounter ended well. It would have been about six weeks before the ducklings were able to fly out of the courtyard. Although it is a safe nesting spot, raising a brood in an area that offers little of the natural concealment a mother in the wild could use to shield them from predators, like hawks, put them at greater risk than being in their natural habitat at the pond.
And, maybe that little swim the ducklings took in the aluminum pan helped them make the adjustment to the pond.
Kathryn A. Burger's e-mail address is burger@northjersey.com.
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