😳Is this DUCKLING in DANGER?😳

Last year, this enormous brown duck (an escapee from a meat farm) hatched out an incredible NINE babies, all different colors from bright yellow to mottled brown. She must have mated with a wild mallard, but sadly, I only saw the babies twice, then they disappeared, likely picked off by crows and gulls. This year I was surprised to find her with ONE duckling, bright yellow, which means it's an easy target. Nature can be so sad. We've followed ducks like Bosley and Belinda, escapees from barnyards, but they always seem to die due to predators. Domestic ducks don't have the wild instincts of mallards, and don't move fast enough. This may be my only chance to see this little fluffball.

💗FIRST Ducklings of the Season! Adorable fluffballs sitting on a rock💗

Happy Spring!

💚BUTTS UP! Dabbling, Dunking Ducks

Here at the duck park, the mallards are endlessly entertaining. Here a handsome drake turns himself upside-down, paddling furiously while he forages around in the muck. 

💛FLUFFY LITTLE DUMPLINGS! My best duckling video EVER

Haven't seen ANY birds for ever so long. The back yard is deserted! I've complained about this before, so I'll shut up now, but I honestly do not know what is going on, because everywhere we go now is virtually deserted. The neighbors across the back fence folded their tents in the night and disappeared in the weirdest "move" I ever saw. One day they were there, shouting and smoking pot with the dog yapping and strangling, and now the place looks scoured and abandoned. This seems to indicate sketchiness, because moving typically involves lots of hubbub and yells and boxes and vans and general mayhem, and there was NONE of that, not even by professional movers. What breaks my heart is that their two cats are gone, too - daily visitors to our yard, a sweet ginger and a handsome tuxedo. Both gone, along with all the birds. But here I have a record of just a few ducklings, the only ones I saw this year. What is going on?

Momma Duck protects the babies - AMAZING !

Sometimes I think that if I had been raised by ducks, I would have turned out a whole lot better. This mother mallard is incredibly brave in fighting off a seagull predator which would have grabbed her babies for a light snack. I've seldom ever seen such courage in any being, human or animal. 

🦆SYNCHRONIZED DUCKS!🦆

These parallel dabblers really surprised me! I could even hear their busy little bills dribbling and drabbling in the delicious muck. I'm not sure what this is called, really, because "dabbling" actually means dunking their heads under, asses up, to dredge food out of the water. This is more like nibbling. I love how you can actually hear the mucky little sounds they make. I've never seen a mated pair act exactly like this, pretty much mirroring each other, with the odd little tiff as they stake out their own square millimeter of muck. Ah, nature!

🦆A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DUCK🦆

My nature walks keep me sane, or at least as sane as I can expect to be in these horrific times. I love extreme closeups of mallards, as they seem to have actual facial expressions. Sometimes they're not too happy I'm there, though the zoom lens makes it look as if I am much closer than I am.

Dreamy ducks: reflections on the lake

This is one of my loveliest duck videos from Como Lake. Pure poetry on the water. Being in nature is the one thing keeping me more-or-less sane during these unbalanced, unbelievable times. 

BOSLEY ATTACKS!

Bosley is the handsome but mysterious hybrid duck we've been following for several years on our walks around Como Lake. He's almost always there, in a little flock of three, along with his girl friend Belinda and a mallard drake we call Drake. Though it's difficult to tell without a lot of ornithological knowledge, Bosley is most likely a hybrid of mallard and magpie duck, which is a goose-sized domestic duck with black-and-white or brown-and-white patches. Magpie ducks are raised for their meat, which may explain why Bosley's ancestors saw fit to escape.

Belinda is a bit of a mystery. She appeared last spring, still a juvenile and more mottled than patchy. She has grown into a fatly gorgeous thing with who-knows-what bloodlines, though with her size and meatiness (sorry, Belinda), it's likely she also carries domestic duck genes. It's a fine romance.

So our little flock of three is swimming peacefully around, when suddenly - ! Well, you'll just have to watch the video. Now that I see it more rationally, I realize that the other party may have done the attacking. It's easy to misinterpret what you see in nature, and even easier to interfere for your own misguided purposes.

The conservationists would have us put the orphaned baby moose back in the woods to fend for itself, though it probably won't last 24 hours. What is the alternative? A big, dumb, tame moose, which is one more small step towards extinction for a species which has become habituated. I won't get into the anguish of what is happening to wild habitat - it's the kind of thing I can't afford to let myself think about too much. Sad how small my thought world is becoming. All those condos, where there used to be green space.

A duck's ass

There was this duck, see, and all I could see was its ass. It went on that way for a long time, so I filmed some of it. The duck's feet were coming right up out of the water, a strange sight, so its bill must have been touching the lake bottom. As humourous as all this is, it's a sign of something not-so-funny, and we all know what it is. Climate change affects everything, from falling lake levels to tropical storms, not to mention forest fires. We separate them out, push them away from us - because don't we have to laugh, once in a while? Especially when a duck keeps showing its ass.

Our miracle duck has found a mate!

Bosley, the magpie duck/mallard hybrid of Como Lake, has had an interesting summer. We almost always see this handsome, friendly guy dabbling along the shore or waddling around, fat as a goose. But then he disappeared for weeks, and we were very worried. Finally we saw him frantically running towards the lake, a mallard drake in hot pursuit. We were a bit shocked, but thought, well, maybe Bosley is a Boslina. Another time, we saw him chilling in the reeds with what looked like the same drake. What was going on?

Then the other day, an amazing development: Bosley appears with a completely different duck, which also looks like a hybrid. She (for it must be a she) is white with creamy-tan markings, a cocoa-brown head and neck, and a white ring where a mallard's neck-ring would be. She has the ruffly wing-feathers and tail-curlicue of a magpie duck, and her long bill, very strangely, is green.

Trust Bosley to pick a true exotic. I don't know if these two will produce young, but I hope so. Oddly enough, a lone male mallard is still hanging around with them, and I can't tell if it's the same one as before.

A threesome? What can it mean?

Duckling challenge!

I think this is one of the best videos I've taken. Seven ducklings were faced with an impossible challenge, but somehow managed to brave it and win. 

This has been a tremendous year for ducklings and goslings, and new batches/hatches are still appearing. Many of the goslings are now plug-ugly, in that awkward middling stage, looking like plucked chickens on stilts. You can see where the Ugly Duckling story came from, for swan cygnets are probably much the same, with a lumpy, ungainly, protracted adolescence. 

Swans may look pretty, but their temperaments are quite ugly, worse than the Canada goose with its haughty stares, stiff necks and hisses. Give me the humble duck any time. Ducks always seem to be smiling, and it's rare to find a mean one anywhere. Mother ducks will drive off threats fiercely, but their constant maternal murmuring keeps the babies within their radar. Had I been raised by a duck (or a cat, for that matter - cats make tender and attentive mothers), things might have turned out very differently for me.

Ducklings in a storm drain

I love these kinds of videos. I've seen the protectiveness of mother ducks, and their urgency and distress when they're separated from their chicks. In this case, one duckling must have gone down the storm drain, and when one goes, they all go, one after the other. It's an instinctive thing that protects them in the wild, but not necessarily on the street. These cops are great guys to take the time to get these cheeping fluffballs out, and not only that, to return them with their mother to the water. Am I reassured about the human condition? I guess so!

Bosley's great adventure!

Bosley is the name we gave to a very strange duck who lives with a flock of mallards in Como Lake. We kept wondering why a very large, piebald duck would hang around with wild birds like that. He looked more like a domestic duck than a wild one. Finally, unable to get any information about him, I sent a gif of him swimming to the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, one of the world's foremost institutions of aviana/birdology.

They got back to me right away, to my surprise, telling me that their best guess is that he's a hybrid of a mallard and a magpie duck, a large-ish domestic duck raised for meat. (See example below). It made sense. These ducks are black-and-white, whereas Bosley's markings have the mottled brown tones of a mallard - in particular, a female.

So it shouldn't have surprised us to see a male mallard chasing after her. She was waddling around on land - the first time we've seen her (him? Still not sure) do that. We've been watching her for a couple of years now, and it's amazing how we see her almost every time we visit.  Once when all the mallards had flown away, we saw him (her?) in the very middle of the lake, dabbling and paddling around alone.

I can see why one of Bosley's parents would want to run away from home if he or she were about to become dinner. But it is obvious this is a true adoption. I mean, if the rest of the flock wants to mate with you. . .  The mallard drake might have been pursuing (her) romantically, or chasing (him) off as a rival. But now that I look at that mottled brown breast, I seriously wonder if Bosley is really a Boslette.

It's a funny video, and unique among all our Bosliana.

BLOGGER'S FOOTNOTE. I found a very strange group of pictures of ducks very similar to Bosley (see example, above) - only they were even more mallardy (or mallardly) than our Bos. I say more mallardly because some of them even had the iridescent green heads of the mallard drake. This was on a duck forum of some kind, and everyone took a guess at what kind of ducks these were. They came up with half a dozen names of very exotic-sounding purebred breeds. Fuck, guys! These are bastard pretenders, the love children of two duck species, and you cannot admit it because mallards are just too common. They're like pigeons, really. Only little kids like them.

And magpie ducks.

Are these magpie/mallard hybrids?

The orphan duckling

I love seeing and filming the first ducklings of spring, but I was saddened to see this little guy running around peeping frantically. I am almost certain he was separated from his mother, or she lost track of him (not hard to do looking after 24 babies at a time). Ducklings can swim and feed themselves immediately upon hatching, but they have little sense of direction on their own, and have to be herded and tended to keep predators away. A duckling this tiny would be a tender morsel for a crow.

My hope is that he or she found a new flock or clutch or whatever you call those darting swarms of golden fluffballs in the lake. If Bosley can make it with a flock of mallards (I deal with Bosley in another post), maybe this teeny one can rejoin the duck race. 

Mystery of the Magpie Duck: still unsolved?

After the revelations in yesterday's email from the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, we went to visit our newly-recognized magpie duck in Como Lake. There he was, fat and feathered and practically eating out of a man's hand as he threw seeds to the flock, which was waddling around on the lake shore.

But then I noticed something.

I noticed something I had sort-of noticed before. Our duck's plumage didn't exactly match the photos of magpie ducks, though they had the same general configuration of light and dark.

But our duck is brown.

Our duck has a brown breast and sides which pretty closely match the rich variegated plumage on the mallards (particularly the females) all around him. Magpie ducks are closer to solid black and white.

Then I realized I probably didn't fully understand what the Cornell Laboratory guy said: "It is a hybrid  of mallard origin" likely referred to OUR duck alone, not the whole species as I had assumed. I guess I thought his entire race had a mallard origin, like Thoroughbreds being spawned from ancient Arabians, or Bengal cats from wildcats, but probably not. Our guy is unique.

Though we can't know for sure because he likely won't submit to a DNA test, this is likely a mixed-race duck, a genetic puzzle, which is partly what makes him so special. That means either his Mummy or his Daddy was a magpie duck which mated with a mallard: a strange love affair, which might even have rendered him sterile, like the mule which results from a donkey mating with a horse.

Or not?

And why is he so big? He's nearly the size of a goose, for God's sake! It's hard to believe he was crossed with anything, let alone a duck so relatively small. We noticed his feet were at least an inch longer, as was his bill. But I tend to trust what the Cornell Lab guys say.

Today, when I was particularly eager to get a good look at him, he practically posed for me, his whole body out of the water, even turning to let me get a look at the other side.

Though the mystery has been solved, it hasn't been solved fully. The scenario is now more complicated: a magpie duck and a mallard producing offspring which has features of each, but is mostly magpie in size and configuration.  And what of "the other one", the second magpie duck which we thought we saw once? Did that mating produce more than one offspring which decided to stay in the safety of the lake rather than become someone's dinner? Or is this Bigfoot all over again, seeing what you want to see?

I wonder, too, why he posed for us on dry land like that. We've been glimpsing that duck for several years, in an "oh, look, there he is!" "Where?" "Oh, he's gone now" sense. Never has he stood there three feet away from us, preening and quacking into the camera.

The magpie is a most illustrious bird

Dwells in a diamond tree

One brings sorrow and one brings joy

Sorrow and joy for me

The magpie is a most royal bird

Black and blue as night

I would that I had feathers three

Black and blue and white

I saw the gentle magpie bird

In dusky yester-eve

One brought sorrow and one brought joy

And sooner than soon did leave

The magpie is a most illustrious bird

Dwells in a diamond tree

One brings sorrow and one brings joy

Sorrow and joy for me

Sorrow and joy for me

Sorrow and joy for me

SOLVED: the Mystery of the Como Lake Duck!

I've written about this guy before. He's an inhabitant of Como Lake in Coquitlam, B. C., a place we walk around a few times a week.

The lake is filled with mallards, various diving birds (even loons), and, sometimes, great congregations of Canada geese, but this particular duck is totally unique. To be honest, he doesn't even look like a wild duck. I've tried to find out more about him, but since I didn't have a name, only a description, I kept running up against a blank wall.

Over the several years we've seen him, I became more and more curious about this strange rogue duck, and then downright perplexed. Eventually, every time we spotted him I began to go nuts. Something was going on here! He was so big that he seemed like a domestic duck that had gone native. He was piebald in his markings, like a cowboy's pinto horse, and had that long, thick, curvy Donald Duck bill that you see in the barnyard.

A couple of years ago I found a magnificent site for the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. This is one of the best sites I've ever seen for sheer volume of content combined with ease of use. If you want to find anything bird, it's here.  It's truly user-friendly, with lots of descriptions and thumbnails of species so you can put name to bird, not to mention recorded calls and songs for every type of bird. This site helped me figure out what those eerie "whoo-whoot-whoo-WHOOOOO!" sounds were that I was hearing on summer nights (barred owl). The call is described on the web site as "who cooks for you?", which delighted me. The "youuuuuu" sounds exactly like a descending trill on a bassoon.

Finally it occurred to me that if anyone in the world could identify my mystery duck, it would be the Cornell Laboratory. I emailed them, attempting to attach a link to the video of it  (which may or may not have worked) and describing it as well as I could.

Some time went by, but not much. Then today I got this email, which delighted me no end!

Hi Margaret,

It is definitely a domestic-type — closest I can find is something called a Magpie Duck. It is a hybrid of Mallard origin.

http://www.zooenc.eu/en/magpie-duck/

Best,
Marc

Marc Devokaitis
Public Information Specialist

Now that I had something to google, everything matched up and I realized that it had to be a magpie duck. Apparently, these birds make good eating and are cultivated for their meat, a fact that had better not get around Como Lake. It's surrounded by avid fisher-persons who might just be up for a duck dinner. This guy is so friendly and hangs around the shore so much that he'd be an easy catch.

(Not our duck. Presented for comparison only.)

A couple of times we thought we saw a smaller duck of this type. A female? It's possible, though we didn't pay enough attention. I'm not sure why it's called a magpie, but that's his name, and he apparently has mallard blood, perhaps the way I have Spanish blood from the Spanish Armada. (Not. We were all dirt-poor Irish.) Some of the photos I've found show ducks with iridescent mallard-like patches on their heads. 

Well I'll be damned!

Meantime, though this song isn't really about my duck, it's very lovely and I want to include it here.

And one more barred owl video.

POST-SCRIPT: Since writing this admittedly-sparse piece, I've had some thoughts. Thoughts of the ugly duckling, of changelings, of barnyard ducks escaping certain death and flapping away from the hatchet. Of strange-looking magpie ducks who barely escaped being dinner.

This is why I like this duck so much, and why it drove me so crazy before I knew what it was. Though it plainly didn't fit in its environment and looked sort of like a turkey among doves (albeit a nice-looking, handsome turkey), it seemed so comfortable, so glad to be where it was. Its fellow ducks, mostly mallards, didn't seem to notice that it was different, but then - they're used to honkin' hundreds of Canada geese, not always the most hospitable creatures, suddenly descending on the lake and taking it over, doing weird things like swimming in big circles. One friendly-looking duck, one big farmyard-looking duck was not going to be a problem, and they all dunk and dabble the same way, ducktails up. Plenty of gunk and ill-advised tourist-food to go around.

But at the same time. . . I'm depressed today, not quite psych-ward depressed but down, and I wonder if it's because the air has been let out of a longstanding mystery. This weird, doesn't-fit-at-all duck suddenly has a sort of identity. He at least makes sense now. And I don't know whether I like that. I don't know whether I'll be so prone to saying, "Oh, look, there he is!" when he glides or waddles into view. Or maybe I will, but it won't be the same.

It's as if he's been operating under an alias, or has been The Duck That Has No Name, and is now "named", or at least species-ed as a magpie duck. Odd name, that - one would think it would be harlequin or something, with those mixed markings. The only association I have with magpies is Heckle and Jeckle.

I've done a bit of digging into the breed, not a lot mind you because that would bore me, and I can't find reference to it being any kind of hybrid. The YouTube videos I've found feature pet magpie ducks, not obviously being fattened up for the kill.

The magpie duck is maybe 50% larger than the mallards, heavier-bodied, with that cobby build and waddly proportion that aren't common in wild birds. Yes, the mallards have large breasts, but they're mainly floats, a way to keep themselves upright in the water and protected from cold. This guy is just solid, man, carved out of alabaster, or plain wood like a decoy bobbing around in the water. There probably would be some pretty good eating there, with some orange sauce on the side.

Ducks, swans, all that stuff, it's the material of fairy tales and legend. I have a mystical attachment to birds, which is why I went into such deep mourning at the very premature death of my beloved Paco. I hardly had any time with her at all before we found her dead in her cage, for no reason anyone ever understood.

The fact my back yard birds have fled is a mystery, and also pains me. Last year the yard was teeming with species, including loud, arrogant, impossibly gorgeous Steller's jays who would swoop in and empty out the feeder. We also saw juncos, chickadees, wrens, thrushes, towhees, sparrows, and - every once in a while - the magnificent visitation of a flicker burning bright.

Now, they've all gone. Where? and why? Is it because we have a cat now? Because we never expected to have a cat. Bentley is a hunting voyeur only, and is not allowed to go outside and become catmeat. But he does spend considerable time peering out the back window.

And yet, last summer, the first summer we had him, the birds still teemed.

When I go to Piper Spit on Burnaby Lake, blackbirds literally flutter down out of the sky and eat out of my hand. I feel like freaking St. Francis of Assisi. They turn their heads this way and that, their eyes like obsidian beads, their feet freaky black leather twigs. What are they thinking?

Birds do seem to think with a single mind, like the Borg. They exist as collectives. Like humans, they're flock animals, only far more clever than we are. Certainly, they are better survivors. When it all collapses, when the day of reckoning comes, will some of the birds make it? Hitchcock portrayed them as freakish and merciless, and yes, there is that aspect to them. The fat pigeon that took over my hand at Piper Spit weighed about twenty pounds, and I realized as I looked at it that, close up, it was as hideous as the dinosaur from which it evolved.

POST-POST. I felt bad about this, about mentioning Bentley as one of the reasons the birds fled from the back yard. Because it might not be that, at all. We've noticed how dramatically bird populations wax and wane, even week-to-week. Those first couple of visits to Piper Spit were so bird-heavy that I assumed it was always like that, a teeming bird paradise. Then, one week we went and there were only sullen-looking heaps of geese (geese not being my favorites - they have a habit of hissing at you, before they lower their heads and charge). No more magnificent sandhill cranes or iridescent swallows or gorgeously-plumed wood ducks or or or - . But next time we went, about 2/3 of them were back. I don't know what drives them, I don't.

But it's not Bentley! Bentley is like a second child born after tragedy, especially beloved. He is just the best cat ever.

UPDATE from 2021! This post has so many post-posts that I hesitated to add this addition. But since I just got a comment from someone about the Mystery Duck, I thought I'd post a link to a collection of YouTube videos I shot over the past five years of the ducks we came to call Bosley and Belinda. Haven't seen Bosley in several months however, and we are getting worried. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLv59M8aSlCSb4R7FRY7jsB__G0fj4Odt4  

Fifty Shades of Irony

There Once was an Ugly Duckling

There once was an ugly duckling, with feathers all stubby and brown.

When he was very young, something happened to his Mom and Dad. Perhaps someone had adopted them and put them in a duck pond somewhere. He only knew that he hadn’t seen them in a very long time, so he had no one to protect him. He was all on his own.

All the other ducklings, who were fuzzy and yellow and didn’t look like him at all, made fun of him and gave him a hard time.

  

They pecked at him. They quacked at him. They made fun of the fact that he didn’t have a Mom and Dad. They thought his short brown feathers looked stupid and named him Stubby. They wouldn’t let him dabble in the slime in his favourite slime-pond.

One duckling in particular didn’t like him. His name was Wakwak and he quacked at him in a very mean way. “Wakwak,” he said, “we’re better than you, wakwak.”

When the ugly duckling asked why, Wakwak just said, “Because we’re fuzzy and yellow. And you’re not.”

That didn’t make much sense to Stubby, because he knew it didn’t matter what you looked like on the outside. But the other ducks disagreed with him and picked on him all the time.

Still, he was lucky because he did have one very good friend. It was another duckling who looked even uglier than he did, all lumpy and grey like mildew. “Let’s stick together,” Tuffy said to him.

He was called Tuffy because he was so tough. When the yellow ducklings quacked at him, he honked right back at them and sometimes scared them away.

Tuffy said to his friend, “You need someone to protect you.” So Tuffy

began to scare the yellow ducklings away when they were mean. Stubby managed to avoid the darting blows of the tiny little orange bills for a while.

They had such wonderful times together in the duck pond! Stubby was so glad that he had finally found a friend.

But then one day Tuffy said:

“You know, Stubs, I’ve been asked to go swim with those guys over there.”

"You mean those yellow ducklings? After what they did to us?”

 
“Ah, they’re not so bad. They want me to protect them from those mean geese over there.”

Stubby wondered how the geese could be any meaner than the yellow ducklings.

“When will you be back?”

“Oh, maybe next year when we’re all grown up. But don’t worry, the time will fly by.”

But the time didn’t fly by, and Stubby got very discouraged and lonely

and one day decided to leave this unfriendly flock and go somewhere
where he could at last find some peace.

He walked for seventeen miles on a dirt road until he realized he could

swim a lot faster to where he wanted to go (as far away as possible!), so he found a nearby lake and swam and swam and swam and swam and swam.

He finally found a quiet cove where he could be alone and peaceful. But then he heard something. A croak. A really loud croak. It sounded like a frog. The biggest frog in the world!

Soon he found the lake was anything but peaceful: there were bullfrogs everywhere!

There were so many bullfrogs croaking that he felt like he was in a field of cows!

“I am the Bullfrog King, ribbit ribbit”, said a big fat bullfrog.

“Ah shaddap. I’m the Bullfrog Queen and I’m a lot bigger and smarter

than you.”

The two bullfrogs began to arm-wrestle each other with their slimy green arms and try to poke at each other’s bulging bullfrog eyes. Stubby was  shocked! He had never seen anything so mean in his life. This was worse than being pecked at by those little yellow beaks.

“Stop!” Stubby cried to the two wrestling frogs. Don’t you know it’s wrong to hurt another person?” he cried.

“We’re not people. We’re frogs. Who are you anyways?”

“I’m Stubby, the Ugly Duckling, with feathers all stubby and brown.”

“Well, I’m the Frog King and I’m all slimy and green. RIBBIT!” He and the girl frog went right on fighting and throwing clumps of slime at each other.

Stubby was failing in his role as a peacekeeper. It was very discouraging. Even the dragonflies were hissing at each other. Was anybody really getting along in this lake? Why was everyone so mean to each other?

 The days grew shorter and colder. Soon Stubby realized his wings were still too small for him to fly, so he couldn’t join all the grownup ducks as they migrated south to keep warm for the winter.  He could hear them quacking above him as they flew in a v-formation across the sky.

“I wonder if my Mom and Dad are in that flock,” he sighed. Then suddenly he realized something. The first few flakes of snow were beginning to fall and settle on his stubby brown feathers. He had to find some way to keep warm – and soon!   So he had some quick thinking to do. “If I can’t migrate,” he said, “maybe I can hibernate instead.”

“Hibernate” means you sleep all winter, so you have to do it in a warm

place. He began to dig a hole in the ground with his bill, but the ground was full of icky worms.

He began to look for a cave, and found a nice warm cozy one, but all of a sudden a giant grizzly bear roared at him, and he waddled quickly away going wakwakwakwakwakwakwakwakwakwakwakwaaaaaaaaaaak!

Finally he found a hollow log and nestled down in it for the winter, hoping he would be warm enough and stay asleep so he wouldn’t be hungry.

But it wasn’t very warm in the hollow log. In fact it wasn’t warm at all.

Soon he began to shiver. How could he ever get through the winter in a freezing cold place like this?

But then: he heard something.

A familiar sort of honking noise.

He couldn’t believe it! It was Tuffy!

“Tuffy! What are YOU doing here?”

“Those other ducklings weren’t so friendly. You were right. They just wanted to make fun of me ‘cause I’m grey and lumpy. Hey, you’re taking my log.”

“No, Tuffy. Nobody’s going to bully me this time. I’m staying. Besides, we can snuggle up together and keep each other warm.”

“Aw, all right, move over. And don’t take the best spot.”

As the weather grew colder and colder, the two ducklings spent more and more time sleeping. Soon they were in a deep sleep and were so still, they looked like two statues.

But then the first rays of spring began to penetrate the holes in the top of the hollow log. Stubby blinked his shiny little eyes and nudged Tuffy with his wing.

 “Get up, it’s spring,” he said.

“Oh man, I feel like I slept for three months!”

“You did.”

But then Tuffy noticed something, and Stubby noticed something. Over the winter, they had changed. They had grown up, and now they looked completely different.

Stubby looked magnificent, with a shiny green head, a copper-colored

chest, soft silver feathers on his tummy, and a white ring around his
neck.   He had grown into a beautiful mallard drake. He tried out his
quack a few times and was very happy with it.

  

But Tuffy. . . well, he wasn’t so lucky. He looked sort of weird: stringy grey feathers were poking through the moldy-looking grey fuzz on his back. His neck was very long and bent. His beak looked funny too, very long, and bluish-black.

“Tuff, I don’t know how to tell you this, but. . .”

Tuffy ran to the lake and jumped in. He bent his long neck and looked at his reflection.

“Ay, ay, ay, ay,” he said. “What a mess!”

“Oh, it’s not so bad, Tuff. Maybe you’re becoming a stork or something.”

“This is the limit. Sorry friend, I’m running away before the duck police catch up with me.”

Tuffy waddled away very quickly, hiding his head under his wing, and

Stubby realized he was alone again.

In fact, he had never been this lonely before or felt so sad. He realized
that being handsome didn’t mean his problems were over.

  

But just when he thought he’d be alone for the rest of his life, he heard something from far away.

A sort of wakwak sound.

He looked over towards the far side of the lake and saw a whole flock of ducks  swimming toward him. He remembered how mean those ducklings had been and wondered whether he should try to stand up to them, or just run away.

But then he noticed something: these ducks looked just like him! They

had shiny green heads and rings around their necks and nice fat squatty bodies. They wack-wacked in a friendly manner.

Taking a deep breath, he jumped into the lake.

Just then a very pretty girl duck with ruffly golden-brown feathers swam up to him. “Hey! Aren’t you that duck they used to call Stubby?”

“Oh. Um. No. Well, yes. But that was a long time ago.”

“I used to see those other ducklings giving you a hard time, but my Mom didn’t want me to swim away from our flock to defend you.”

“That’s OK, my friend Tuffy defended me. That is, until he ran away.”

“You know, Stubby, you’re a legend among the ducks. Everyone admires the way you refused to be nasty to those mean ducklings. They bullied you, but you wouldn’t bully them back.”

If a duck could blush, Stubby would have blushed at that moment.

“By the way,” he asked, “whatever happened to all those fuzzy yellow ducklings?”

“Look over there.”

He saw a flock of very ordinary-looking ducks dabbling around in the water. Really, they weren’t any better-looking than he had been, with his feathers all stubby and brown. He thought he saw Wakwak in the flock, but when he tried to catch his eye, he swam away.

“They were much cuter as fuzzy yellow ducklings.”  

“Too bad they didn’t stay that way,” his new friend said.

“But it doesn’t matter what you look like,” Stubby said.

The girl ducked looked at him. “No, you’re right. That’s not important.”

Stubby didn’t know how to act around girl ducks. He told himself that

she was a girl, and she was his friend, but she wasn’t his “girl friend”.
But he liked her so much that one day he decided that maybe she was, after all.

Ducks get married just like people do, and they stay together for always.

So the two ducks decided to spend the rest of their lives together, have a family of their own and be happy.

 And that might be the end of the story, except. . . wait a minute, what happened to Tuffy?

 What happened to that weird-looking duckling with all the ugly grey feathers and the geeky long neck? 

Well, one day he saw a flock of swans gliding around in the water. Swans!

Everyone knew they didn’t like outsiders. They were proud and thought they owned the lake.                  

In a panic Tuffy looked around for a place to hide. But by then he was

too big to hide in the marsh grass, and they saw him.

“Ay, ay, ay, ay,” he said. “The jig is up.”

 But then something truly amazing happened. One of them waved his giant white wing and said, “C’mon, brother, we need a big swan to swim at the end of the line.”

“Why are you asking me? I’m all grey and lumpy.  I’d ruin your colour scheme.”

The swan laughed (honk, honk, honk!). “Haven’t you looked in the mirror lately?”

Tuffy bent his head – it was easy to do, since he had such a long curvy neck – and saw that he had grown up to be a beautiful swan!

Now he saw why swans were so proud! He bent his bill to kiss his

reflection in the water. “I’m gorgeous!” he said.

He was very pleased with himself. But he was still a bit confused.

“How come somebody has to swim at the back of the flock?”

“We need a wingman. Swans get hunted, so we have to watch out all the time.  And people are always trying to capture us and put us

in parks and stuff. ”

“That doesn’t sound like much fun.”

“It isn’t. But we’re gorgeous, so we try to make the best of it.”

So Tuffy, whose new name was Sebastian Swan, swam over to the flock and took up his position in the rear. He was never captured and put in a park, but he found out that the life of a swan can be harder than he thought. Being beautiful doesn’t guarantee an easy life.

  

Meanwhile, Stubby (whose name was now Montgomery Mallard, Monty for short) settled down with Melinda Mallard, and they had a very large family of ducklings whose feathers were all stubby and brown. Once in a while he saw Tuffy (Sebastian Swan) gliding around in the lake with his family of cygnets (baby swans), who were lumpy and grey like Tuffy used to be.

But Monty Mallard told all his duckling children never to make fun of the cygnets. “They can’t help it if they’re swans,” he said. “Not everybody gets to be beautiful brown ducklings, like you.”

 




Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book



    It took me years to write, will you take a look
















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