This post goes for 'Show me your photo (of a bird)' contest, round 22.
This week the topic was 'FLEDGLING (Young Bird)'.
And just a day ago I have shot exactly what is needed. Nice coincidence!
By the way - while shaping my post, I had an idea scratching in my mind, the idea about pigeons - the city pigeons - how do they copulate? See, I never stumbled upon the pigeons nests, eggs, chicks... do they copulate at all? as they are no immortals, they should to, but where are the youngsters? never seen one! Which brought me to a crazy idea: maybe they reproduce vegetatively, by budding or cell division? Yes, I know this is unscientific ... but I'll leave that as a working hypothesis for now!
...and back to my post and given topic. On Sunday we had another great walk with my babygirl to the park. Telephoto and bird feeding - part two. This time the starlings and ducks were the ones who posed. And I have witnessed (and captured) a beautiful set of four pigeons having a bath. Hope to share it in the community soon.
This is how the park look like - the bank part located near the pond.
Ofc we checked the hatchings of grebe and coot ducks (they are still there, no chicks arrived yet), feeded to starlings and pigeons all the bread we had with us, and - voyla! - we noticed the common ducks have got the ducklings. We enjoyed meeting, watching and feeding 3 or 4 families. The last of them was only one baby; one woman passing by told us it were two babies a few days ago... probably one already didnt survived the life. What a cruel world.
But generally - the population goes on. Ducks are not going to die out and do not threaten to disappear from the face of the Earth.
This was the 1st duck family we noticed. They were not willing to accept our food and pose, and sloly drifted away into the reeds -- leaving us with not much great photos.
A few cropped sections of the photo above.
Those youngsters are so cute!!
My baby note their beak and consider - imagine! - that all of them are smiling at her!
Ducks are known to feed on algae, stuff of this kind; they also willingly eat bread. But not this time - they ignored the abandoned pieces of bread (one can be seen in the photo), drifting into the reeds, where young ducklings began to look for food. I'm probably wrong, but it's possible that our food got in the way - we showed up right in the middle of a lesson teaching children how to find food for themselves ... we humans, with our package of bread, are not included in the training course ...
Как известно, утки питаются водорослями, стафф такого рода; хлеб они тоже охотно поедают. Но не в этот раз - брошенные кусочки хлеба (на фото можно увидеть один) они игнорировали, дрейфуя в тростники, где молодые утята начали искать себе пропитание. Я возможно ошибаюсь, но возможно что наше угощение помешало - мы явились как раз посредине урока, обучающего деток как искать себе еду... мы, люди, с нашим пакетом хлеба не входим в учебный курс....
Below is another duck family we met.
This time they accepted our food delivery service!
Actually, I like all of them, as they are so cute. But as I have to choose one pic for the contest, I choose this one: Ducklings with our treats; my babygirl approved the choice!
I added 'Feathered Friends' - my beloved community as a 10% beneficiary of the post. Lets grow together!
And now lets part, thank you for your visit, hope you enjoyed the visuals. And dont forget to jump on this nice contest, too! Check the rules, they are pretty standard:
- weekly challenge, new prompt is published on Sunday;
- mention the contest name in the title of your post.
- obviously, photo should be your own;
- post it in #FeatheredFriends community;
- and use #smap as a tag;
- drop an extra text description;
- post may feature any number of photos, just express which one is your entry (otherwise 1st will be taken into account);
- link back your entry in the comment section of the contest post;
