Bird Flu...

...Or some type of bird epidemic in our yard. For the last few months, we have been seeing these ducks in our yard and mostly in the pool. This picture was taken on April 12th.

We started to see them more and more frequently, and we would wake up to "quacking" in the night. We liked the visitors.

More recently we would only see the Hen duck by herself, and then we started to see her daily, but she would come and go.

Yesterday I kept seeing her standing on the top edge of the negative edge. I thought it was funny how she was perched up there so I wanted to take a picture. Whenever I got close, she would hop into the water. I got up closer to her and she didn't seem frightened or bothered that I was there, but she kept hopping in and out of the water onto the top of the negative edge.

I looked into the trough of the negative edge and this is what I saw.....

OH MY GOODNESS 8 baby chicks. No wonder she didn't want to leave the edge she was watching over her babies. The kids were at school when I made this discovery, but Curtis was working from home. I thought he would be bothered (the mess they could cause in the pool), but he thought it was kind of cool. He told the kids first thing as soon as they walked in the door.

We had used the pool the night before and there were no ducks around, so we know they just showed up. It is a mystery where they came from. I don't see a nest or any broken eggshells around.

The Mother seemed distraught that they were in the trough and she couldn't be with them. She would occasionally hop into the trough, but there is not much room for her to move around in there, so Derek gently picked up each chick and threw them into the pool with Mom. Now they seem like a happy family, and the ducks are there constantly. 

When I woke up this morning There were 2 hens and the Mallard was back, now there are only 5 chicks. I'm not sure what happened there.

When we were kids my brother always asked my mom for a pet duck, and she said you can have one when you are 35. He's old enough now, I wonder if he still wants one?

We like them for now, but I know we can't have them stay long-term. We may be calling animal control in a few days. There is a pond right around the corner from our house, we often go there to feed ducks. I guess they like our house better. One of my friends around the corner said she had 2 ducks in her pool the other morning, someone told her when they lived in Tucson they had a mountain lion drinking from their pool. My Sister-in-law just found a rattlesnake in her garage the other day. I'll take the ducks.