Expert: Roger Lederer - 4/23/2007

Question
2 nights ago, we found a duck on the road with her 10 ducklings, obviously very shocked and stunned by the cars who were passing about 2 centimetres from her everytime someone past. we managed to get them into our garden where they recouperated for a day and looked very happy. we fed them and made sure they had water, but ecided that they should be set free in the canal. After asking the RSPCA to help us put them into a box and free them, we felt happy that they were free in the water. About an hour later, we went down to the canal to see if they were ok, and found the female being drowned by 5 other ducks. The ducklings were terrified and my little sister was in tears. My mum and i managed to scare the ducks off before it was too late, by (regretably) throwing small peebles at them to scare them. It was a very close call, but i am scared that it might happen again if im not around. The ducklings are only a few days old, very tiny, and one of them has a bad leg and cant keep up. Is there anything i can do? i feel very attched to these ducklings and the mother as i have saved their life twice now. please help!!!

Answer
Well, it may seem cruel to you, but I suspect the explanation to what you observed was simply copulation. Males mount female ducks in the water and they often go under water while mating. They rarely drown. Sometimes several "bachelor" males try to mate with a female, sometimes being described as a "gang rape", which might be too brutal a description. There is nothing you can do short of moving the female or the males. But I suspect that she will be just fine, in spite of a bit of trauma. Roger Lederer at Ornithology.com