Recently my girls and I were weeding and watering when a very flustered bird erupted from the nearby peaceful foliage. I didn't get a good look at the bird, but figured it was a dove or some other fairly common bird around these parts, and we continued with our weeding. About a week later, our cat happened to expell this same bird from the same area of our yard, and this time the bird stuck around long enough for a quick pic:
It was a momma duck! We had seen a pair of ducks by our pool a month or two prior, but no sign of them since. After the duck flew off I carefully, gently, and unobtrusively explored the area where she had flown from and found this:
A nest of around eight eggs, the size of large chicken eggs, nestled in the greenery. The miracle of life just never gets old, and this was amazing to see. In the interest of the little ducklings I didn't tell my children about them (they would love them--possibly to death) until a couple of weeks later when we returned from Tahoe after Easter break, and discovered the nest to be empty apart from some broken, empty, crushed eggshells. I am hoping they hatched and grew, and nothing bad happened...but mostly I'm just thankful I got share a little in this amazing process.
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