Before my month-long watch of the mallard nesting in my garden, I hadn’t appreciated the feat of endurance it takes for a duck to incubate eggs. The mallard I wrote about last month laid more than half her own body weight in eggs over 10 days in the flower bed outside my window. She then spent 31 days sitting on the nest with just two hours’ break a day.
These were long, hot days with little chance to drink, feed or poo. Before flying off, she tugged moss or grass over the eggs. What had seemed an open place to nest became camouflaged by leaf patterns as plants grew. Unlike the secretive woodcock that nested in this same border two years ago, her wings clattered as she took off.
