We live in a urban area of northern CA and had 3 call ducks. My females are small, about a pound. Sometime last night or early this morning something killed one of my girls. My mail was calling for her all morning so I went out to investigate what was upsetting him. There were just a few short body feathers in the yard but nothing that would indicate a struggle. My dog found the ducks partially eaten head with some of the neck attached (but skinned). The face was still intact but one part of the skull had been removed and I could completely seen inside her head (sorry for the graphic details....). No blood or other signs of a struggle other then my other two ducks acting skittish. Our ducks are kept in our fully fenced back yard. Our yard is surrounded by a 6 foot redwood fence and has retaining walls on 2 of the three sides. We do not have racoons, foxes, or bob cats in our area but we do get some skunks, opossums, and rats. I have never seen owls in the trees around our yard, but they could be there. I have seen hawks in the area but never in our neighborhood or my back yard for that matter (although I guess it could be possible). Our chicken coop has bee hit by rats (when we had chicks) and we had what we thought was a opossum get into our coop and kill one of our chickens and then came back the next night and attached anther but was scared off. Whatever attacked our chickens left the body......so I am wondering what may have taken off with my ducks body but left the head/neck behind.
Any thought would be appreciated. Just trying to figure out what I am up against to keep my other ducks safe.
Any thought would be appreciated. Just trying to figure out what I am up against to keep my other ducks safe.