It is day 12 and they just grew enough so they can pop their heads above the plate and discover a new world.
Mine jump on the plate from practically day 1! Silly things.
Well... it's not impossible nut i think it is more likley to be coyotes or something and the vultures are just there eating what the coyotes are leaving. I'm thinking if it were an arieal predator you'd find feathers or something. I don't see how vultures could carry off that many full size ducks that fast.
Saturday was a terrible day here! Spent most of the day outside with the ducks, doing garden stuff. Had to leave for about 20 minutes to buy milk, a cabbage head and some apples. Even left the garage door open…
When i came back all the ducks were inside of the duck house, quiet and scared. I don't know what has happened, there were no signs of struggle, no feathers or paw prints but a lot of ducks are missing! Mister Chapo Duckman and two of his friends disappeared and worst of all Mayhem and Limpy were gone too!
Mr. Limpy, the last of the first ducks is no more!At first i could not find Harry Duckhini and Sunny Sunshine, but they hid in the kitchen, both so shaky and afraid that they spent the night inside the house.
Mayhem showed up the next morning, limping and with ruffled plumage, somehow he must have escaped from whatever that was. Fortunately he was not injured, but he is now afraid of me. The same drake that enjoyed sitting in my lap last year is literally fleeing me now.
Working turned out to be difficult, the dux are currently alerting multiple times every day and i have not been able to figure out what's triggering them. There's nothing visible on the cameras, but of course i run out every time…
Harry and Sunny usually spend the day on the patio where they feel safe:
Since Sunday i have noticed an unusual number of Turkey Vultures on my property:
They have never roosted on my fence posts before and the ducks are terrified by them. All the years before, there have been 2-3 of these birds around and now all of the sudden over ten are lurking.
Would Turkey Vultures attack ducks if they are really hungry?
Anyways, i have attached a ground- and a hot-wire from my electric fence to the top of the fence posts and they are no longer roosting there. But still circling in the sky.
It also seems that some of the mallard drakes have disappeared. Oh, and the crows have left. All of them! There is not a single crow in the area, where there were more than two dozen. A single pair of mallards shows up every morning, spends the day with the ducks (safety in numbers?) and flies off after sunset.
No clue what has happened here, but this place is not peaceful anymore.
I am not sure. It could be yet another technical issue. And maybe raccoons have recently learned how to operate switches? …
IDK! - There is a carcass somewhere out in the woods, i saw the vultures circling and landing this morning somewhere to the north. People up there (responsibly!) have multiple dogs that have witnessed something or have been attacked themselves.
I'm also thinking coyotes. The time we had them here they were moving through. I could hear them in the distance and over a period of a week or two they got closer and closer until they were HERE, where they stayed for the night, before continuing on. Never had them since (that was four years ago).
The trail cam thing is perplexing though.
Aliens?
We do have coyotes from time to time here. However most of them don't survive for long. Too many folks here that would not have protein on their tables without their chickens and wabbits…
Hi Shaw - good point! - I am not sure about the kind of vultures, here is a cutout from another picture where there is a reddish smudge on these birds heads:
