Flock Friday for January 1

Happy New Year! 🍾🥳🎊🎉

Today, a surprise revelation about the ducks… but first, some chicken pictures:

The ducks in the back corner of the pond:

Our pond partially froze for the first time this season on Tuesday. Here’s a time-lapse GIF of about an hour of the ducks swimming around in the non-frozen portion:

A still shot:

Another time-lapse GIF:

When I went out there on my morning rounds, the ice had already somewhat melted, but there was some left:

So what’s the surprise? Well, we noticed that we had misgendered one of our new ducks. In the second batch of ducklings in 2020, we expected to have all females, including a Khaki Campbell, who we named Clara. When ducklings are young, it can be hard to tell their sex, and apparently the hatchery made a mistake. Ducklings initially develop feathers like females when young, but as they get older, males start to show distinctive plumage. So apparently Clara is actually male; we now have two male Khaki Campbells, and one female. So Clara’s true name is now Cam.

Looking back at my photo archive, I can now see the first signs of a change as far back as October, but I didn’t notice until Jenn pointed out the change on one of the rare times she accompanied me on my evening rounds. I’m so observant!

Here are the ducks on the back lawn. The front rightmost two are the two Khaki Campbell males, Clyde and Cam:

In the pond, from the pond deck:

Collision while going after mealworms:

A closer view; Clyde and Cam, the two Khaki Campbell males, are the lighter ones with dark heads on the left; Cora, the female, is in the center, with a Rouen behind her:

Peeking through the duck house:

The bank by the duck house:

Another couple of pics from the pond deck: