Lift-off

As of a few minutes ago, both seagull chicks from the roof opposite are now able to take to the air. They seemed to do a few minutes in the skies around NOC before landing back where they'd started together with one of their parents. Much loud (congratulatory?) calling out then ensued. It seems like 2010 is yet another successful year for the NOC roof rookery.

dDuck / dt = 0

A brief update just to say that nothing has changed in the quad. Brood 1 is still at full strength (7 adult-looking ducklings); Brood 2 still has its solo survivor; and the newest brood still has 2 surviving members. So, no change.

It's similar over with the seagulls. The two chicks seated on the roof opposite are increasingly practicing flapping their wings, but neither has taken to air yet any further than a few centimetres. The other chick I mentioned last week has learned enough now to swoop quite gracefully around the towers. No sign of any further crashes.

Up and away

Spotted the first lift-off of one this season's gull chicks a short time ago. It was a relatively brief affair which ended with the chick crashing, unharmed, into one of the building's towers (although I now see that it's flown off to a different roof, so it's improving). The chick in question wasn't one of those I've been watching the past few weeks, but they're both getting close to achieving the same feat. If previous years are anything to go by, their first flights will be prompted by heckling parents. No sign of that happening just yet - at the moment, movement in the chicks is restricted to following their parents to beg (in a high-pitched squeal) for food, and tracking the shade provided by the tower opposite.

The only duck news to report is that we're down one further chick since last time. The third brood, which had 3 small chicks, now has only 2. Confusingly, the family group still has 3 chicks, since it includes the remaining survivor from brood two. Brood one still appears to have its full complement of 7 chicks - which now look just like adult females.

Headcount

A couple of changes over the weekend: sticking to tradition, these are downward adjustments in juvenile avian numbers.

Firstly, the most recently duckling cohort has lost one of its members along the way, so now stands at 3. Actually, if we include the sibling (or semi-sibling) from an earlier cohort, it still sits at 4, but either way we're one duckling down since Friday.

Secondly, we appear to have lost one of our gull chicks. I've never seen more than 2 on the roof at once today, and while it could be that there are 3 but I only see 2 at any one time (hey, they look identical to me), this seems unlikely.

Anyhow, no additions to report at this time. Neither ducks nor gulls.

A return

Earlier this week, we spotted that there was a new brood of ducklings in the quad. Only four, which suggested that the brood had actually been around long enough for a larger cohort to have been thinned somewhat.

Anyway, much more interestingly, the solo duckling, hitherto abandoned by its mother, now wanders around with this new brood and its mother. Given that mother ducks are pretty intolerant of non-immediate-family ducklings, this points to the new brood being half brothers and sisters of the (formerly) solo duckling.

In other news, the seagull chicks just get bigger and bigger. They're still all grey and fluffy, but they've already started trying out their wings. Completely unsuccessfully as yet, but their development is a lot faster than that of the ducks. I guess that illustrates the superiority of the regurgitated seagull diet over the insects-and-bread-based one of the quad-bound ducklings.

Life in the quad

Not much to report this week in the quad. In terms of ducks, we appear to have lost the final member of the youngest brood together with its mother. Other than that, we still have a full complement of first brood ducklings (7), plus the sole surviving member of the intermediate brood (still sans mother though). The latter duckling is still on the small side, but is doing surprisingly well given that it was abandoned several weeks ago, and still gets picked on by the remaining mother.

The three gull chicks do not appear to have been joined by any others just yet, in spite of there being at least two other mating pairs of seagulls on the spine of the roof opposite. All three chicks are looking pretty healthy, if a little overheated on the mercilessly sunny roof, although shade from one of the building's towers means that they do get a reprieve from the sun for part of the morning.

Anyway, that's all that passes for news from this office.

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Update: I take it back, the youngest brood, both mother and duckling, is still in the quad. Must have just been hiding from me the past couple of days. So, vis-à-vis my opening statement above, there really is nothing to report from the quad this week.

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Recount

Further to yesterday's seagull announcement, I remembered to bring in the camera today and now realise that there are actually three chicks in our first seagull family ...


While shooting from my office, I also got pictures of one of the now adult-looking chicks from brood 1 ...


As well as the sole surviving, and now motherless, chick from brood 2 ...


Though lacking any kind of parental role model (since at least last week), this latter chick seems to be surviving alright. Then again, given how rubbish ducks are at successfully raising chicks to adulthood (at least in our quad), perhaps their absence isn't such a handicap?

In other duck news, the most recent brood (number 4 by our count) was down to a single, still-tiny chick as of yesterday. Not so good.

There are a few more pictures over here.

First seagulls

Just to note that our first seagull chicks of the year have appeared on the roof opposite. There are two of them, and they're looking rather fluffy and unsure of their footing on the sloped roof. I'll try to remember the camera and long lens for tomorrow.

Duck update

It's been a while, but the current state of affairs in the quad are as follows. The original brood is still doing well, and still has 7 ducklings, though these are now well on their way to looking like adult ducks. The second (surviving; actually the third) brood is down to a single duckling, though this is getting bigger. I've actually not seen said lone wanderer today, but I did catch sight yesterday. The main news is that we now have a third brood. It had 5 tiny ducklings when I first saw it yesterday, but I can only see 4 today. And, based on past performance, I'd guess that there were more than 10 to start off with.

In other news, contrary to official decree, I've now seen a member of staff (who will remain nameless) feeding the ducks. And another even asked me to feed them while she was away on business. So the effort by Estates to wean the ducks from their quad seems doomed to failure this year. Especially if the surviving brood makes a successful exit and then returns next year. However, the pitiless operation of Malthusian Law means that we're unlikely to be up to our eyeballs in ducks any time soon.

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Update: I've just caught sight of brood two's solo survivor; and brood three does still have 5 chicks after all.

Duck count

Last Friday we had 7 (first brood) and 4 (third brood) ducklings in the quad. Over the weekend the latter appear to have been thinned to a single chick, who's now sitting uneasily next to an adult male who might not have his/her best interests at heart. The members of the first brood continue to grow ...

No sign of any seagull chicks yet, and no hint of any further depredation by the seagull adults on the ducklings. Maybe they just wait until we're not looking?

Recount

A more prolonged period of observation finds that the two surviving broods have memberships of 7 (older brood) and 4 (younger brood) chicks. So the older brood is doing better than I thought.

It's a gull-eat-duck world

Although I've been told time and time again that the seagulls are probably eating the ducklings in the quad, I've never seen it happen (or even nearly happen), and so have discounted this loss term from the quad duck equation. In fact, the ducks don't seen fazed in the least by the much larger gulls that occasionally swoop down into the quad. So I've assumed these lacks in both observational evidence and avian fear mean that the gulls don't partake of the ducks.

Until now!

A few minutes ago we clocked a gull on the library roof with a dead duckling. We didn't see the nefarious deed itself, so it's possible that we saw an act of scavenging rather than predation. Certainly, duck-on-duck murder has been spotted in the quad before, so the gull could well have been on clean-up detail. Anyway, after a few minutes of manhandling its prey, the gull managed to "reshape" it sufficiently for down-in-one consumption. Impressive and alarming.

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On the subject of the ducks, an update on their dwindling numbers.

By last week, the three broods hatched in the quad had been reduced to two. One of the first two broods appears to have been entirely wiped out, with the two remaining ones exhibiting quite differently sized chicks - reflecting their hatching time.

At the start of this week, both broods had about 7 ducklings each. However, since then numbers have fallen slightly such that the older brood now has 5 ducklings, while the younger brood has thinned to 4. These numbers include the recent predation/scavenging event.

History repeats itself

We got our third duck family earlier this week, and it's already down to 10 chicks. The original two families are now even more significantly down, with just a handful of (admittedly larger) chicks between them now. Less evidence of people feeding them this week, but I'm probably just not paying close enough attention. Anyway, it'll be interesting to see if anyone makes it out alive this year. It's not even May, but already a wearisomely familiar picture of Nature's waste seems to have all but played out.

Still, on the plus side, the seagulls have been getting busy this week. Noisily. Just outside my office window. So hopefully there'll be at least some signs of more enlightened, K-selected behaviour to offset the r-folly of the ducks.

Malthus takes a bite

It's difficult to be sure about the rate at which it's happening, since I'm not making a concerted effort to head-count them, but the duckling count is definitely down since the start of this week. Then, both mothers had around 15 chicks each, but today the broods are both down to less than 10 each, although it isn't terribly easy to count them quickly.

I've also not been keeping track of violations of the food-embargo. The declining duckling number hints at no further breeches, and I certainly can't see anything down there just now, but duck-on-duckling murder is (apparently) at least as common a Malthusian scythe as starvation.

Actually, that probably makes the quad sound at little to much like some sort of Roman Amphitheatre, with gladiator-style duckling action in the arena. So far, I've yet to see anything bad happen at all. From my perspective, ducklings just disappear, but I'm assured that there are nefarious goings-on down below.

Two tribes

Presumably at some point during the weekend, a second brood of ducklings has hatched, so we now have two collections of adorable chicks competing for the negligible resources of the quad. Or not so negligible as it happens, since someone is feeding them in direct contravention of the human-Anatidae rules of engagement. Anyway, for now all looks well in the quad, but with ~30 ducklings in there all aiming at adult size, it's going to get ugly before long.

In passing, while there's no sign of any chicks yet, our roosting seagulls appear to have returned. And seem to be spending a lot of time here judging from the accumulation of guano.

Quad fodder

As promised, some photographs of this year's first quad brood. Not that it's possible to tell, but the upper image shows part of our new, improved quad pond.





In unrelated photography news, the sun is setting here right now, but doesn't look any redder this evening despite Iceland's current contribution to air pollution.

Let the Malthusian dynamics begin

About a week earlier than in last April, our first batch of ducklings has appeared in the quad. I didn't spot them myself, but they were clocked from another office with a great view down into one of the bushes that they nest in. Given that they were all hiding under their mother, I wasn't able to do a headcount, but my corridormate thinks that there are already more than 10 chicks. That fits with last year's first batch which came in at 14. Anyway, I'll see about getting some pictures for Strange News, but I'm obviously prohibited from circulating them more widely.

Duck arrival

Although (by official edict) I'm not supposed to be paying attention to the ducks this year (at least, not telling anyone about them or e-mailing around photographs), I am going to record that, as of now, they are back in the quad. We have one female and one male. They're making do with the trough at the moment since the pond is out of commission pending "improvements". So it looks like another summer of chicks, cuteness, murder and (especially this year) starvation is on the cards.

Return of the Wanderer

For someone as poorly observant as me, it's difficult to know for sure, but I'm pretty sure that this year's successful seagull (last blogged here and photographed here) is currently hopping around its birthplace on the roof opposite (I'm in work wrapping up a review for the NSF). The gull, which still has juvenile plumage, arrived with an adult, possibly its parent. I don't know how gull families work, but they're a veritable model of the nuclear family compared to the dysfunctional ducks. Anyway, wearing my anthropomorphic hat, I suspect that animals as big and seemingly clever as gulls are probably smart enough and interested enough to recognise and return to places that once were important to them. So, who knows? It could be them.

Ducks and Suppression

It's been a while since I reported on the ducks, but as I'm off on holiday next week, an update's in order.

Despite their advanced state of development, they've still not made the slightest foray off the ground and are still waddling around the quad. As of today, there are seven "ducklings". Five remain from the original batch of survivors, and they're indistinguishable from adults now. And there are two from the later batch; while they still have a bit of duckling in their feathering, they also look just like adults to a first glance.

But there's been more duck news this week.

The quad is due to be re-landscaped during the winter, and one of the future developments will be a proper pond. However, furious debate has arisen about whether the ducks will continue to be fed in the future. Although attrition is particularly high in the quad (less severe this year than last), year-on-year the number of ducks that returns to breed is rising. So there's been heavy discussion between "stakeholders" (estates, duck-feeders, duck-lovers) about the pros and cons of continually incrementing the quad's population. My contribution to this discussion has been to point out that, even with feeding, duck mortality is pretty high, apparently through inter-brood competition (= murder by competing mother ducks). Anyway, it's now been decided that the ducks won't be fed in future years, so that their numbers can equilibriate (Malthus-style) to the quad's unassisted carrying capacity. But, in order to avoid drawing attention to future duck famines (and their attendant PR disasters), I've been instructed not to report duck activity on our local e-mail distribution list, nor send around pictures of cute ducklings.

As I basically concur with the no-feeding decision, I'll be going along with this strategy. It'll be interesting to see how long the news blackout can hold - a lot of offices look down into the quad ...