This local pond where the cutest baby animals (ducklings and goslings) have been living has been a haven for me over the past couple of months. I want to share with you some cute videos of animals with their animal babies with some fun facts about ducks and geese thrown in there too. Hope you enjoy.
Watch the video below:
Or if you would prefer to read, here is the transcript from the video:
Over the past couple of weeks I've been spending time with the most beautiful families of ducks and geese: watching their babies grow and photographing and filming them along the way. In this video I will share with you some of the cutest moments that I have encountered and share some fun facts along the way too. Over lockdown I've been making the most of the wildlife in my garden and local area, but one of my most magical encounters have been with the ducklings and goslings here by this pond.
The geese, especially, are known to be quite protective parents so I feel very honoured to have been accepted as part of the family and to have been able to spend all of this time with them, photographing and filming their babies.
The family that I've been lucky enough to spend the most time with here at this pond have been the Canada Goose family. Now this species was actually introduced here to the UK about 300 years ago now, but they've become extremely widespread, and this is mainly due to their ability to thrive in urban environments, especially like here in city parks and other similar areas. Canada geese, as a species are actually known to live in flocks, but over breeding season, like we're in now, they separate off into those pairs and it's actually thought that they will mate for life with that partner of theirs that they've paired up with. A lot of the footage I've captured has been of the goslings grazing up on these grassy banks here and grass actually makes up a large proportion of their diet, particularly in the summer months, because not only are they able to digest it and get enough nutrients from it, but this also provides the perfect place of those parents of theirs to watch out for any oncoming predators with a totally clear, unobstructed view. Females will typically lay a clutch of about two to eight eggs. Here on this pond we have a clutch of five beautiful babies that, when they're initially born, are covered in this beautiful yellow down. Canada geese are actually quite a unique species in terms of that the young actually remain with their parents for the entire first year of their lives. Now the other species here that I've been spending a lot of time with are the mallard ducks. Mallard ducks are actually the most common duck here in the UK. Laying is a really stressful time for mum if you're a mallard duck because she actually lays over half of her body weight in eggs in only a couple of weeks. These ducks normally lay about twelve eggs on average. Here at this pond we actually have two different families; one which has a massive ten babies. The other one a bit smaller, she only managed to keep four of her babies over the weeks that passed recently.
After the stress of hatching is over, mum will then incubate once all of the eggs are laid and she'll continue to do this for 28 days until those eggs are then ready to hatch. Now there's also a family of coots that live here, but they are much more shy and tend to be hidden away within the reeds at the back of the pond. Coots and moorhens often get mixed up, so the way to tell them apart is that moorhens have a red beak. There's an "r" in red and an "r" in moorhen. Whereas coots, they have a beautiful white front of their face, with that frontal shield going right up to the top of their forehead. They aren't actually born with that frontal shield though, the babies have this red spiky, sparse down that they're born with - to be honest not the cutest of babies here, it does take a while for that frontal shield to then develop for them, so they are left looking a little bit bedraggled for the first few weeks of their life. If you want to learn more about wildlife photography, then I have a totally free guide available for you. All you have to the following link and grab yourself a copy: https://mailchi.mp/772a328fbcb0/freephotographyguide
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