ValeriGail
Member
I live on a lake in East Texas. We have a pair of Mallard ducks that hang out here. The female laid an egg on our boat, but discarded it. So I put out a cat carrier on our dock, with some soft reed like grass in it hoping she would take to it to nest. She did. We lost the first cat carrier to a really bad storm, it was blown off the dock and swept away in the middle of the night. As soon as I knew, I was out there with a second one but tied it down to the dock this time. She took right to that one too and started laying eggs.
The crazy thing though.... she kicks them out of the nest. She's gotten up to 5 eggs in her nest and then they start disappearing. Sometimes we see the broken egg on the dock. She had four eggs in her nest, and it seemed as if she was finally settled in to incubate. She was staying in the nest except for small bits of time in the evening. The male is still hanging around and I know when its time for her to come out because he starts strutting and quaking about. She had four in there last week (last time I could check while she wasn't in the nest) and today I noticed she was out and about at a weird time, hanging out on the neighboring dock with her male... and there are NO eggs in the nest. We found both eggs floating in the water along the bulk head.
Why would she do this? My rough calculations from when she started first laying eggs till now, she's kicked 11 eggs out of her nest and 5 were lost in the storm to a total of 16 eggs! Can she keep laying eggs? She has been laying eggs for 5 weeks now. We are not disturbing her nest at all. Everyone here knows its off limits. We do walk passed it, as its on the dock, but we have never even touched the cat carrier since I put it out.
I just totally confused by all this. If its something we are causing, I want to fix it. If not, I'd just like to know why out of curiosity.
The crazy thing though.... she kicks them out of the nest. She's gotten up to 5 eggs in her nest and then they start disappearing. Sometimes we see the broken egg on the dock. She had four eggs in her nest, and it seemed as if she was finally settled in to incubate. She was staying in the nest except for small bits of time in the evening. The male is still hanging around and I know when its time for her to come out because he starts strutting and quaking about. She had four in there last week (last time I could check while she wasn't in the nest) and today I noticed she was out and about at a weird time, hanging out on the neighboring dock with her male... and there are NO eggs in the nest. We found both eggs floating in the water along the bulk head.
Why would she do this? My rough calculations from when she started first laying eggs till now, she's kicked 11 eggs out of her nest and 5 were lost in the storm to a total of 16 eggs! Can she keep laying eggs? She has been laying eggs for 5 weeks now. We are not disturbing her nest at all. Everyone here knows its off limits. We do walk passed it, as its on the dock, but we have never even touched the cat carrier since I put it out.
I just totally confused by all this. If its something we are causing, I want to fix it. If not, I'd just like to know why out of curiosity.
