Gloomy Saturday evening, in between rainfalls, I checked on the cathedral red-tail nest. All three nestlings present and accounted for... Drat. There was some of the usual hopping and flapping, more of the latter when the gusty breeze picked up.
The odd moment of the evening came around 7:30 when I was standing along Morningside Dr. almost below the nest and kept hearing some repetitive chucking noises. Not quite a robin chipping or other hawk-warning noises or a frog noise either. Finally I realized that about 15 feet away, there was a mama mallard on the other side of the chain link fence with eight very young ducklings in train. She was frustrated trying to figure out how to get through the fence with all her babies (the only gate with a nice gap at ground level was 100 feet away), and it didn't help that a feral cat kept trying to sneak up on them. Finally the ducks disappeared in the tall grass and I can only suppose she decided to hunker down for the evening.
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