Ducklings and Lilacs

Saturday we saw the first ducklings of the year in our pond. The mama mallard looked somewhat confused and dazed by her 6 darting ducklings. I never was able to get a photo of all 6 ducklings in a single frame. They moved too fast!

There is nothing shy or retiring about these ducklings. They move like tiny windup toys, all in different directions at once. No wonder the mama duck appeared to be dazed.

Moving fast in different directions

Sunday morning the ducklings were zooming here and there all around the pond with no sign of the mother mallard in view. After watching them through the binoculars from the living room window I decided to put my 100-400 mm lens on the camera and go out to the back yard and play around photographing the ducklings.

The ducklings were frantically chasing and catching tiny insects flying just above the pond’s surface. Occasionally they went so fast it looked like they were running on top of the water.

It never ceases to amaze me, the way their instincts help them survive from such an early age, even with the mother absent much of the time. She briefly appeared but quickly flew away when 3 amorous male mallards began chasing her. Even though the males are persistent, she never moves too far away from the pond and continues to come back to the ducklings again and again. The nurturing instinct in animals and humans always feels like a miracle to me

Last year mid-summer, a mallard mother appeared with 3 ducklings swimming near her. The next day there were only 2 ducklings swimming with the mother, and the day after that, no mother and only 1 duckling remained.

It’s risky business being a duckling in our pond what with snapping turtles, raccoons, and a fox family living nearby and all hungry for duck dinner.

We watched that lone duckling swimming and growing day after day, week after week last summer. Wonder of wonder, it survived and grew to adulthood. I worried whether it would leave the pond in time to migrate in the fall and if it would learn to hang out with ducks of it’s own kind, as it had kept to itself even when other ducks occasionally visited the pond. Waiting and wondering through early and mid-fall, finally one day in late fall several mallard ducks landed for a rest in the pond. When they left, the lone duck left with them.

I think instincts are tiny little miracles waiting for us to notice them.

“Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.”
― C.S. Lewis

The lilacs are in bloom again, with their soft fragrance wafting on the spring breeze. I picked just a couple of small branches from the lilac that grows up by our deck. They filled the house with a beautiful scent.

The lilac bush is tall and leggy and not the most attractive of lilac bushes, planted by the corner of the house almost fully shaded, reaching for the light that it can find several feet above deck level. A couple of years ago when it had been damaged by a falling tree and looked even more scraggly than usual I suggested that Jon cut it down. He trimmed it but let it continue growing. Last year it had only a few flowers but this year it is full of flowers and I am so glad that Jon didn’t listen to me and simply trimmed it instead of removing it.

I find regular miracles when I watch trees, flowers, gardens, birds, and nature of all kinds in our back yard and I believe that miracles are all around us every day if we simply look for them. The endless cycles of birth, growth, decline, and death contain the seeds of infinity if we can only see them.

I wish you a day of ordinary miracles and little things to rejoice in.

May you walk in beauty.

Leaves above the pond – colors are altered to please me.