You were warned...

I told you to prepare for some cuteness today ... and what is cuter than dabbling ducklings?  Yesterday, I discovered that the Canada Geese babies were hatched out, so I figured the mallard ducklings should also be out.  Armed with my camera and hope, I set out for a place where I know mallards breed and are relatively used to humans.  Bingo!  

First thing I spotted was a mama with two little ducklings toddling along.  During my walk, I found at least 5 broods of ducklings, ranging from 8 to two.  I suspect that turtles, snakes, fish and hawks take a pretty heavy toll on the little ducklings.  I also saw a great blue heron watching those fluffy little ducklings with a fairly high degree of intent...

I got rained on while I was out, but the overcast skies actually gave me pretty favorable light conditions so I came home with some shots I like quite a lot.  I'm putting another in Extra of Mama telling the little ones to hurry things up.  

And although this is a stretch for TinyTuesday, I'll submit it anyway - after all, these are tiny!  Thanks JDO for hosting!


I also saw a very funny standoff between a turkey vulture and two crows over some sort of small carcass.  The crows tried everything in their bag of tricks to get the vulture to leave his prize, to no avail.  I posted six other pics (vulture, bluebird, more ducks) starting HERE on Flickr if you'd care to have a look.

The little house wren is still singing around the yard and appears to being leaving the two occupied nest boxes alone - fingers crossed.  Haven't seen a junco in about a week, so they've all left to head north; lots of white-throats still around, singing mightily - they'll be gone soon.  Catbird/s eating suet and darting around in the shrubbery, and birdsong is filling the air.  

Off to join my naturalist group for the first second walk of the season tomorrow (first one was while I was away in FL) - looking forward to seeing everyone.

Thank you, as always, for stopping by and taking time to have a look.  Your comments are always much appreciated.

TTFN
Debbi 

EXTRA:  And, as it usually goes, right after I posted this, two first-of-year birds showed up in the yard!  #33 a Brown Thrasher and #34 a rose-breasted grosbeak.  I am going to put them both in Extra so you can have a look as I'm not sure they'll be around long enough to blip.