"A tidy Mother."
W.L. Colls. Ph. Sc.
She flew to the water, about 150 yards away, apparently without breaking the egg; but unfortunately my friend could not get up in time to see what she did with it. She hatched out the rest of her eggs satisfactorily.
I presume that either the egg in question was cracked and she removed it for the sake of cleanliness, or because she felt herself unable to sit on so many eggs.
On many occasions I have noticed an egg left bare on the top of the downy covering which ducks are so careful to leave over their eggs when they go off to feed, and these eggs, if taken away and placed under a hen, have invariably hatched. To the best of my recollection I have never known eggs disappear from a nest containing eggs up to thirteen in number; but over that I could quote many instances of one or two eggs going.
This has led me to believe that the bird above alluded to had removed an egg from her nest, as she felt herself unable to sit on so many. A good number of eggs to leave under a duck is thirteen, and under a hen twelve.
I have satisfied myself that hens, however small and light, break many more eggs than ducks, and for this reason I do not care to give a hen too many—one broken egg frequently leads to more.
It is advisable when once the ducks have begun to sit, to catch their mates, if possible, and shut them up in some convenient place during incubation, as otherwise they bully the sitting ducks when they come off to feed, and you may have the annoyance of seeing a duck desert her nest just at hatching time, as nature has warned her that she must shortly lay again. I had one instance of this kind, when a duck which had been sitting very steadily left her nest when the eggs were actually "spretched" (cracked previous to hatching), and as later in the day she showed no signs of returning we had to put them under a hen. The duck in question never returned to her nest, but soon made another. She had not been disturbed in any way.