Ever had wild ducks take up with your domestic ducks?

[Blondiega1]

As I've said, my boys (pekins) are free range on our lake.

Over the summer and still today, we have a male hooded merganser that has taken up hanging out with the boys.

So now, I suppose I have a trio!
Dos (spanish for two) has never tried to come up to eat, but he sits in the water and watches when I feed the boys.


We call him Dos cause at one point we had a female mallard hanging out that we call Uno, but she eventually moved on, so now it's my boys and Dos.
He's so much smaller than the boys, but they got a regular "boys club" going on!

Here's what Dos looks like:

 

[duckyfromoz]

What a gorgeous fellow he is- so lucky for your boys to have such an attractive visitor come to stay at the lake. Hope he sticks around longer than Uno for you.

 

[Mahonri]

When I was a kid we had big white ducks. I have no idea what their breed was. We would eat all but one drake and we would have a lot of hens for him to service. One year when a bunch of the hens were hanging out on our irrigation pond a lone wild mallard drake showed up. A month and a half later we had a decent number of half breed ducks.

 

[destinduck]

Ducks like to hang together. Every year I see wild ducks with domestics at a pond by me. They stay for a while and then move or migrate on. If more hoodies come in he will probably follow.

 

[treldib]

Hooded Mergansers are diving ducks, that may be why he only watches while the Pekins eat....try getting some feeder fish like minnows to feed him...

Pretty

 

[SilverPhoenix]

I think this is so cool. Dos is beautiful!

 

[KansasKid]

How cold is it where you are? Everything up north is migrating down around here now because of the cold snap. If you had a cold snap that probably brought him down, and if it warms up a bit he will stay longer until it gets cooler.

It's killin me, i really wanted to get some divers this fall.....

 

[Blondiega1]

It's only been down in the 50's over the last month, but this weekend is our first freeze warning of the season.
Predicted to get down in the 30's.

Dos has been hanging around since last fall, so I don't think he's going anywhere. He's pretty much set up house keeping.
In Jan- Feb of this year he had several "ladies" but after breeding season they moved on. Dos has stayed.

The lake is large and there's plenty of baby fishes. I see him diving all the time in one area of the lake we call the hatchery, cause it's kinda shallow there and there's always baby fishes.

 

[KansasKid]

Wow looks like he's there to stay. Long ago i use to have a flock of buffleheads that became "locals" and would go back and forth between a large pond to the east of my house to a small puddle that was in literally a rock throw away from my front porch

 

[Redwood Violet]

I had flying mallards for a while, and they would go down to the river about a mile away while the rest of my flock stayed home. Occasionally they would bring back buddies; kinda funny to see 5 flying in to the barnyard when you're only supposed to have two. The wilds never set up shop and moved in, though. They would hang out for a while then leave.