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You are here: Home / Nature & Respite / Something Good Open Thread / Operation Mallard Respite Thread

Reader Interactions

23Comments

  1. 1.

    The Dangerman

    Duck, duck, duck, duck, duck. Never a goose. How can I run around in a circle without a goose (yes, I know, hanging curveball, middle of the plate)?

    ETA: Crud. I so wanted a 2.

  2. 2.

    CaseyL

    The saga of Mrs. Mallard has brightened the last few days considerably. I wonder if there will be a threepeat next year – and I wonder if any of Mrs. Mallard’s babies will attempt to follow her and also nest on Emma’s Dad’s balcony.

  4. 4.

    J R in WV

    Delighted the ducklings have landed safely, not so sure i want to watch a nearly 20 minute video of the experience.

  5. 5.

    Betty Cracker

    You’d think a duck would be more sensible about where to build her nest! Thank goodness for Emma’s dad. Otherwise, I’m not sure how the saga would have ended!

    We had our own little bird rescue story today. Someone cut down a tree and found out after the fact there were a pair of woodpecker babies in it. One didn’t make it. :(

    But the other did! A bird rescue group has the little thing now, and I hope he/she makes it.

  6. 6.

    Ken

    This has the potential to be made into a video game.  Lemmings for a new generation.

  7. 7.

    RobertDSC-iPhone 8

    I’ve had a rough day physically but this gives me a huge lift. Happy to see Mrs. Mallard and her babies make their trek.

     

    Emma and her Dad are wonderful for sharing this with the world.

  9. 9.

    dmsilev

    The end-stage of duck rescue

    Around this time every year, the Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center in Huntington Beach is filled with quacking from hundreds of ducklings orphaned during spring “baby season.”

    In part because of the coronavirus pandemic, this spring has been especially busy. The center is seeking help from community members to feed and care for more than 500 young birds, operations manager Debbie Wayns said.

    “For whatever reason, these ducklings were abandoned by mom, or mom was killed, and so then these babies aren’t old enough to survive on their own, so they were brought to us either by the public or by animal control,” Wayns explained.

    More baby mallards are expected soon from nearby Disneyland, which usually drops off thousands every year so they are out of harm’s way at the busy theme park, Wayns said

    Also, welcome to Southern California:

    All those ducklings add up to many hungry mouths to feed.

    The center posted a plea on Facebook on Monday, asking for donations of lettuce. Mustard greens, kale, Swiss chard and other greens poured in.

  10. 10.

    Michael Cain

    Was out exploring another of the Fort Collins’ bicycle trails this morning.  I was surprised to find a trio of white pelicans on one of the shallow little ponds tucked away along the creek.

  13. 13.

    JCJ

    @Ken:  Ooooh!  Great idea!  Kind of like the Untitled Goose Game, but instead of playing as  a goose and being obnoxious you get to play a duck rescuer.  Should get Major Major Major Major on that right away!  ( I think he is the one from whom I learned of the goose game)

  15. 15.

    satby

    I shared on YouTube that we’ve enjoyed Operation Mallard 1&2 here on the blog and asked Emma to let her dad know he’s got lots of admirers here too. Because video and tweets like these give us all a chance to bask in the goodness of one lovely, kind man.

  16. 16.

    Redshift

    We had an Operation Mallard at my office one year. Mama Duck built a nest in a big planter section of a second floor terrace (we could peek through the windows, since they were reflective and she couldn’t see in!) It was a great spot right up to the time they were old enough to walk to the nearby pond.

    Luckily we had some volunteer rescuers who corralled them all and took them down in the elevator in a box. They had experience; it had happened at least once before I worked there.

  17. 17.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @satby: ​ At the end she shares a bunch of tweets from all over the world saying much the same thing. Operation Mallard is a lot bigger on Twitter than on YouTube.

    Her YouTube channel only had a few videos with a few hundred views. I hope I’ve done my small part to blow it up.​
     

    I still wonder how this plays out in nature. Do ducks routinely build their nests high off the ground? How do they get the hatchlings to safety? You can see in the video how hard she has to coax them to make the jump from the nest to the floor, a distance of perhaps a foot. What was the plan, Mrs. Mallard?

  18. 18.

    StringOnAStick

    I’ve been rehabilitating a neglected landscape, and all the mulch was decayed and acting like a water barrier, so I removed it all and added new mulch. I made a rectangle out of landscape timbers and put it around the base of the bird feeder so the ground feeding birds could still get seed from directly on the ground instead of trying to find it in the mulch.  4 hours later I looked out the window and saw 4 California quail had figured out my plan and were busy scratching away inside their dirt feeding rectangle.  Success!

  19. 19.

    J.

    Thanks so much for sharing the link! I’ve been checking Twitter but hadn’t checked today. What a wonderful, feel-good story. I hope Emma and Steve write a children’s book called “Operation Mallard.”

  20. 20.

    Eunicecycle

    @J.: That’s a great idea! Did anyone else notice it looked like one of the ducklings in the back was pushing the other ducklings off the planter? That’s what it looked like to me anyway!

  22. 22.

    satby

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:  Ducks nest in weird places. We had a nest of mallards in my backyard in Chicago, and the only water nearby was our 3 foot high swimming pool. No idea what happened to the mom, but when we realized she seemed to be missing (probably killed by a cat) we called the nature center, who told us to take them quickly to a pond, where geese or other ducks would adopt them. The baby ducks weren’t eating the lettuce we gave them, and two of the seven died on the 20 minute drive to a forest preserve with a lake, but the other five made it running into the pond, where other ducks started quacking what I hoped was a welcome.
    I was told by the nature center that ducks lay such large clutches of eggs because most ducklings don’t survive ?

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