Gratitude Monday: Feathered friends

One of the things for which I’m really grateful is that, to a large extent, there’s a co-existence between the various forms of wildlife here in the Valley they call Silicon. By which I mean that you find the furred and feathered set right next to the geeks and freaks.

One example is a pair of ducks that has chosen an office building in Mountain View to hatch its brood for several years. The building (which I’ve mentioned for less feel-good reasons) probably dates from the 70s or 80s. It’s constructed in an irregular fashion around an open-air atrium, which is landscaped with a faux pond and stream. I suppose in flusher times, there was water constantly flowing from the fountain at one end, but I haven’t seen that in the three years I’ve occasionally visited the place. And given our drought, I’m surprised any is left at all, and that the place is not teeming with mosquitos.

But although it’s often sludgy, evidently there’s enough water to suit the ducks, and they can hide their nest in the shrubbery, which probably doesn’t get disturbed that often by any gardeners.

I don’t know when they arrived this year, but in May, I first saw Mama and her seven lovely chicks:

You’ll notice that Mama keeps close tabs on the fuzzballs, and she never once lets me out of her glare. If her wings ran to fingers, she’d be giving me that “I got eyes on you” gesture.

A few weeks later, we were down to six babies, and a while after that, there were only two.

I was sitting on one of the benches across the water one day, occasionally taking pictures of the birds on the pond and listening to one of the office holders blaring into his mobile phone on the balcony—evidently he’s quite the yachtsman and had several outings in the works. Anyway, when he finally hung up, he and I chatted about the seasonal residents.

The cap’n thought that crows likely got the small ducklings—other predators wouldn’t be able to get in at ground level, because you need opposable thumbs at height to open the doors, and raccoons or cats would be unlikely to draft on human traffic. Must have been something fierce, though, to overpower Mama.

He also said that they put out oats for the family to supplement whatever the largely absent Papa brings them. “We looked up on the Internet; they can eat oats.”

The surviving ducklings seemed to do well—appear to be females to me, but all I have to go by is that they look like Mama.

They left last month, although I’m told that one more fell victim to some sort of predator, so it was just Mama and one. Kind of a high mortality rate.

But—I have to say that it’s been quite a nice experience to follow the little family for four months, and to know that their human neighbors were looking out for them in a non-invasive NorCal kind of way.

I’m grateful for that.