My neighbor found a young paradise duck with nylon wrapped around its ankles, one foot is dead and the other it can just stand on so may be ok. No lesions or broken skin. Does a dead foot need to be amputated even if there are no lesions?
Here in New Zealand we don't have turtles in our creeks, but we do have big native eels which I've read eat ducklings and grab feet. I chased a couple of eels away the other week and they didn't come back thank goodness
No idea, I've only started noticing them over the past 6 months to a year maybe but I've just started taking a proper interest in them recently so who knows
I think around 3 - 5 of them, at least 2 females and a male or 2. They all fly. We have known Paddles for a while, always used to come for food at the warf before settling in the creek with her babies. The black males you can see a faint green hue over their heads, as if they are mallards...
Yes wild mallard hybrids with black mama! 2x black babies and 3 mallard colours. I actually feed 2 other families just to distract them from "Paddles" the 1 footed mama while her babies eat. All 21 babies from 3 families are multi colored, mallard, black and blonde.
I'm happy to read it may not...
Its now midnight here so they are asleep and too dark for videos. It just looks like whenever a duckling eats they tend to jolt their heads forward and back rapidly to help the food go down before drinking some water. Its just this except the food seems to not be going down, like she has just...
Yes a duckling. Because she is chugging her neck back and forth and sipping water like they do to get food down, but she had been doing this for the past 10 mins
One of my 3 week old wild ducklings tucked into her food too quickly and food is now stuck. She is taking on water and trying to chug it down but has been this way for the past 10 mins. I can't catch her and certainly couldn't massage her neck without her escaping or me accidently hurting her...
Oh I should post there. There is no way I could catch this one, well maybe I could but I can't imagine being able to hold it carefully enough while it struggles to escape. It is drinking but looks like some of the water comes back up out the nostrils
So I am hoping I don't find a dead duckling tomorrow morning. I was a bit late in feeding my 3 week old wild ducklings in our creek and they chugged it down too quickly. I am feeding game bird crumble dry because it seemed like wetting it made it more trouble to eat. One looked like it had food...