Mallards can have two broods during the season and ducklings can number from 1 – 13 in each.
Eggs are incubated for 23 – 30 days.
These little down-covered ducklings are out of the nest in less than one day.
During the breeding season, Mallards eat mainly animal matter including aquatic insect larvae, earthworms, snails and freshwater shrimp.
MYSTERY BIRD
I will identify it at the end of the post.
Migration certainly appears to be over, at least at Lambton Woods. I didn’t have a single migrating bird.
Here are the birds I was able to photograph:
Views from Lambton Woods:
Some botany:
MYSTERY BIRD
Despite the lack of gold colour this is a recently bathed female American Goldfinch.
NATURE POETRY
May is bee in blossom,
May is birds a-nesting,
May is picking violets on a hill;
May is young and twenty,
May is Sunday-besting,
May is eager Jack and willing Jill. – The Old Farmer’s Almanac, 1961
Miles Hearn