Yes, spring is here and since I had a post on the first cherry blossoms, I figured why not post on the first babies? Here they are – all eleven of them… and they don’t seem the least bit concerned about global warming! Really this post is just to remind you to take a break and don’t get so involved in all that depressing market stuff that you lose sight of the fun. Damn… I really should have gone fishing today…

This mother mallard has eleven healthy ducklings

Mother mallard and ducklings out for mid morning meal

Ok, someone recently asked me about this, so I decided a Weekly Word on it might not be a bad idea. A mallard is a species of duck, specifically Anas platyrhynchos. It is the most common species of duck and tends to live in close proximity to man, so if you’ve seen a duck, in all likelihood it was a mallard. The male mallard (known as a drake) has a gray back, a brown chest patch, an iridescent green head and a yellow beak. The female (known as a hen) is a mottled brown with a dark mottled beak. Both have bright orange legs. During molting (when the birds shed and replace their feathers) the male mallard can look somewhat like the female. When this happens the male is said to be in eclipse plumage.

Most domestic ducks, the kind you see on farms, are descended from the mallard. Domestic ducks tend to be much larger than their wild relatives and are usually white. Sometimes domestic ducks escape into the wild and you will see them alongside the wild ducks in your local park. They’re easy to spot because they are usually much larger and if not white they will have white patches here and there. This coloration is known as piebald. Domestics sometimes breed with their wild counterparts producing smaller piebald ducks.

There is another rarer duck known as the American Black Duck (Anas rubripes) which you may see alongside the mallards in your local park. These ducks look so much like mallards that you might be surprised to find that they are in fact a distinct species. The male American Black Duck looks much like a female mallard only darker and with a yellow beak. The female American Black Duck looks like a darker version of the mallard female. Both mallards and blacks have a purple/blue patch on their wings, but the mallard’s is edged in white, while the black duck’s is not. The American Black Duck does hybridize with the mallard but the tendency for hybrid females to be less fertile is threatening the Black Duck population.

The following photos were taken in a park near where I live in New Jersey.

Mallard female

Mallard male

Mallard male in eclipse plumage

This mallard female is most likely the result of a cross between a wild duck and a domestic duck

Male American Black Duck (note the yellow beak)

Because the American Black Duck is becoming rarer, researchers who study the species will place identifying bands on them in order to track them.

Part of my daily routine includes a walk in the park where I practice being as aware of my surroundings as possible. These are techniques I learned reading Tom Brown Jr.’s nature observation and tracking guides, but is also something that I think comes from just being interested in a lot of different things. Aside from Tom Brown’s ’splatter vision’ which I read about it some years ago and have made a habit, I find that the best way to develop awareness is to pick out something that interests you and start looking for it. Eventually, you can spot it anywhere. At that point, you move on to something else. Before you know it, you can spot a lot of things without even looking. That’s probably why when I first went bird watching some years ago, I spent the entire day in sub-zero temperatures seeing nothing but tree limbs and today I am usually the only one who even notices the birds.

Anyway, by now I have an eye for wildlife, especially bugs (smile).

On my latest walk in the park I came across this tree limb, which is absolutely covered in springtails.

Limb of tree covered with springtails

They’re hard to see in this picture, try this one:

Closer view of tree covered with springtails

See those tiny black dots? No? Okay, how about this:

Even closer, but this doesn't give you any idea how many there are (a lot)

They are pretty small. How about this:

Springtails as big as I can make them with this little point and shoot...

Hungry little buggers.

Anyway, I knew they were springtails, but I didn’t know what kind. After a little internet research, I’ve decided they are Neanura muscorum, although I am really not certain of that. If anyone has any idea, do let me know, as I like to ID animals whenever possible – it gives me a name for the face (smile) – and also let’s me discover something about them, although frankly, I can find next to nothing about the habits of this particular species. Any entomologists out there?

From the little that I do know about springtails, they are not necessarily a bad sign for the tree – although the missing bark might be.

That's me!

Continued…

I’ve had this little Canon PowerShot SD850 IS for a little over a year now. I bought this little camera with a particular purpose in mind. I wanted to have a camera with me at all times, especially when I was out for a walk; something lightweight, something so that if I happened upon an interesting critter I would be able to document it. I have an eye for interesting critters, particularly insects, and I’m always catching something that I wish I was able to get on film. I was tired of missing the shot so to speak. This little camera is perfect for that, but something is definitely lost in quality when you are dealing with these little lenses, especially if what you want to take a picture of is particularly small… like a bug. Up until now I have been zooming in with the digital zoom in order to get the shot, while all along this little camera had a macro setting! Once I realized this, I went out with it in mind to try it out. These photos are the result of that. Continued…