Duclair Ducks

Near my residence is a pond covering possibly five acres of a former swamp.  It has been created by a family of beavers over the past few years.  At first they formed a dam along and across a farm road that crossed a small creek outlet from the swampy area.  As the farmer needed to use his road he removed the section of the dam crossing his path.  This photo is the pond as it originally was.

The beavers promptly built a new dam a few feet downstream from the former one.  This, of course, flooded the farmer’s road completely.  The farmer destroyed that.  The beaver built it back higher and stronger.  The farmer then built the farm road up some four feet higher, installing a 30” and a 12” diameter sluice pipe under the road.  In addition, the farmer, not to be outwitted by a stupid beaver family, brought in a bulldozer and destroyed all of the trees surrounding the swamp, effectively taking away the beaver’s food supply.

The beavers plugged the pond end of the pipes causing the water level to rise creating a larger pond extending further back into the swampy area where there were more trees.  However, this also caused the pond to widen into the farmer’s fields on both sides of the swamp.

The farmer, not wanting to cede his newly bulldozed pond surroundings to the beavers, brought in a backhoe and removed the pipe plugs.  The water level began rapidly dropping.  The beaver family replaced the plugs the first night.  That brings us to the present.  As the spring rainy season has already passed, the pond is very slow to completely refill to its former level so the extra size of the pond has not fully returned as of yet.

On a recent observatory trip that I made I spotted these ducks swimming in the small portion of the farmer’s field yet covered with water.  Having never seen any ducks like these before this I knew not what they were.  I rapidly took photos of them.  My son asked several of his duck hunter friends what they were, but none knew.  Someone thought they might be someone else’s escaped tame ducks.  Under the circumstances I placed a photo of them on facebook.  My college student grandniece, Janna, informed me they were Duclair Ducks.

I yet didn’t know what they really were so I, of course, Googled the term.  There are many sites referring to them.  It seems they are a cross between Mallards and tame ducks that have been developed in the Normandy area of France.  I added this photo for the benefit of anyone else that may never have heard of them.