Today: a mystery, shoving a duckling, showing off feathers, and another GIF summary of 75 pictures. Yep, I took a lot today. But first, here are 13 pictures of note.
A Rouen showing off her wings:
This duckling, who we nickname Gimpy after her dodgy leg, but one of my blog readers more charitably calls Sassa, I thought was a Blue Swedish when I got her. But as she grew her feathers I had my doubts about that — she doesn’t look like the other two Blue Swedish, Sven and Sonja:
For one thing, she has yellow feet, when theirs are black… and her feathers are mostly white, though rather grimy, since she has never gone for a swim as far as I’m aware:
So if she isn’t a Blue Swedish, what is she? Based her coloring, I think maybe Pekin? If you have more experience with ducks than me, please let me know! I have queried the hatchery I got them from to see if they can help.
A dusty Rouen having just chomped part of a leafy treat:
Another leafy treat:
Water droplets, and more feather growth:
Green feathers:
The mystery duckling having a drink from the edge of the pool:
Since she hasn’t shown any inclination to swim, and I was sitting right there, I took advantage of that opportunity to introduce her to the concept in a less graceful way: I shoved her in. Not nice, perhaps, but she’s going to be in the pond in a few days, so I wanted her first swim to be somewhere she can easily get out:
She flailed around and complained, unsurprisingly, but did fine:
After about 30 seconds she hopped out, and spent ages preening, which will be great for spreading her waterproofing oils. Maybe she won’t be quite so grimy now, though probably needs more than one swim to get cleaned up:
The Rouens showed her how much they enjoy swimming:
A Rouen showing off her wings again:
The GIF of all 75 pictures taken today, if you want more duckling pictures in your life:
(A question: do you watch these summary GIFs? If you do, would you prefer I include all photos, including the ones highlighted above, or just the ones I don’t include above? And is the speed of one picture per second good?)
Yes, I watch the summary GIFs – often more than once. Great fun, seeing them growing.
What lovely green feathers!
And Gimpy does need encouraging – yes, keep putting her into the water. Can she swim properly with her gimpy leg? I’ll be interested to see just what she is.
Todays’s summary GIF doesn’t want to work, though.
Elaine
Hard to know if Gimpy will be able to swim properly, since she hasn’t really tried yet, but hopefully so. Maybe she’ll just go in circles! The summary GIF was rather large, so may take a while to download.