Wild Ducks

When I was about eight years old a neighbor, Nettie Atkinson, gave me a “setting” of ten mallard duck eggs. I promptly put them under a setting hen and went into the duck business. At that time no one referred to them as mallards—they were simply known as “wild ducks.”

I’ll bet that hen was surprised when those eggs hatched in four weeks! Nonetheless, she took her job seriously and tried to take care of those baby ducks, but with mixed results. The little ducks wouldn’t follow her around attentively as baby chicks do, so I had to keep rounding up stray ducklings and try to keep them all together. After three or four days of this I decided it would be easier the raise them without the hen’s “help.”

I made a little pen of chicken wire and put in an old pie pan for feed and another for water. I made a sunshade with some bricks and a board. The ducklings loved their new setup, but they were really messy eaters. They would take a big bite of ground-up feed and then turn to the water pan for a drink—before they swallowed the feed. Pretty soon the water pan had lots of feed in it. I kept changing the water for a couple of days and then I realized that the little ducks simply couldn’t (or wouldn’t) swallow the dry feed. After that I added a little water to dampen their feed. This worked a lot better—but they were still messy eaters. Later I dug a hole and buried a pan to make them a tiny swimming pool. They thought it was just great!

In a few weeks the little ducks outgrew the pen and started ranging farther and farther. And then one day one of them started to fly! The others were fascinated—and within a week or so all of them were flying. They started to spend a lot of time down at the creek—but they always came back each evening. By now they were taking care of themselves and we thought that they might join a wild flock of mallards that would be flying over in the fall migration. So we clipped the feathers on one wing of each bird so that they could no longer fly until they molted and new feathers grew in.

The next year John got some eggs of white Pekin ducks and tried his hand at raising ducks. He did well and soon we had two different breeds that liked to hang out together. The following year there was some mixing and crossing , with interesting results. We had white Pekins with green mallard heads and speckled brown and white birds, and other odd combinations. Some were larger, like Pekins, and others were smaller, like mallards. But by far the most interesting combination was a trio of small, pure white ducks that could fly! They were gorgeous!! It was thrilling to watch! In the decades since then I have sometimes been a member of the Chicago Ornithology Society—but those pure white ducks flying still stands out in my memory. And I have never since seen a white duck flying.