Pond Study: Helping an Injured Duck {Week 5}

Our goal this week was to concentrate on pond ecosystems. At least that is what I had planned. All the great plans of mice and men…. What we actually ending up doing was helping an injured duck get some help from the RSPCA.

Catch Up! If you’ve missed any of my pond posts, you can find them at the following links: Beginning Our Pond Study; Assessing the Pond; Checking Out the Pond Pollution; Ash Tree Study and Spring Fauna at the Pond.

A Lecture on Ecosystems (from Gary)

It started off well enough with Gary doing a teaching session on ecosystems. There’s something you should know about Gary- he used to be a lecturer many moons ago. He’s good, very good. I’m in the hall way on the computer and all I hear from the living room are sighs of contentment punctuated with the odd, ‘Daddy, your SUCH a good teacher!’ I pop my head around the corner for a photo of this apparent perfection and what do I see but Hangman being played on the white board – essential I am led to believe, in the whole concept of ecology!

I think ponds must have one of the most easily accessible ecosystems, and the children just found the whole thing fascinating (Hangman probably helped!). In addition to Daddy, I let them explore this web site which they seriously loved.

Goals for this Week

The goals this week were for the children to:

Understand pond ecology
Be able to identify any elements of the pond ecosystem in plain sight to them whilst at the pond
Discuss the elements they were unable to see either because the season or because of their position ie under the water
Use our water periscope to view under the water

However, once at the pond, we were met by a fairly badly injured duck, and it was this which was to take over our pond study:

It is incredible the difference just one week makes. Last week all was peace and quiet. This week, not so much. The pond was heavily populated with Mallard ducks, with many more than last week. Also, just seven days ago they were all existing happily and peaceably along side each other.

Husband and Wife Duck Teams

There was much love in the air when we went down to the pond this week with many of the ducks having paired up:

And even ducks who should know better, paired up….

And then there were the singles…

However, the contest was on for the remaining female ducks. And what a contest! It was so noisy and ferocious it completely ruined the peace of the previous week:

The best duck won in the end, and they sailed off into the sunset to beget some little eggs together.

Helping an Injured Duck

Which brings me full circle to our little injured Mallard we found on the side of the pond. We believe it had been injured in a fight with another male for a female. My children are not backward in coming forward and soon they had summoned the local vets to the scene with their net, followed by the RSPCA:

Here, they are checking whether the duck’s leg is broken

They were so kind, sticking around for a good half an hour to chat with the children and explain why, if at all possible, they leave wildlife in the wild rather than bringing them in for treatment. My older children are all passionate about nature (inherited from my mum) and they all felt this was the absolute highlight of their week!