Henrietta

Over the 30 years of living in our home we have had two mallards come by. Most every year they stick around our backyard for a time, generally swimming in our small decorative pond, eating by the bird feeder, or just lounging. We named them Henry and Henrietta. Several years ago they had a nest in the flower bed by the mailbox, then a racoon got the eggs. This year was different. We saw Henrietta on occasion, but not Henry. This is the story of poor Henrietta.

Henrietta had made a nice nest behind a shrub we planted a few years ago. Over a couple days my wife noticed that she had laid four eggs. The thing is, we never saw Henry with her, or even in the yard this year. We are not sure what happened to him. My wife kept track of Henrietta, viewing her nest a few to several times a day. She was concerned about Henrietta not being regularly present on the nest to incubate the four eggs she had once noticed. The nest was made primarily of leaves we use as mulch in the flower bed in which this shrub is located. At one time she covered the nest with leaves and some of her down. Then a curious thing occurred, She stopped coming to the nest. Three for four days, and still no Henrietta, when checking the nest.

We now wondered what became not only of Henry but Henrietta. One day, our neighbor mentioned seeing a fox in the yard one evening. It was some time after that the Henrietta was a regular no-show. A few days later another neighbor mentioned seeing the remains of what she indicated mallard eggs. A day or so later, after not having seen Henrietta on her nest for a good number of days, my wife gently pulled back the covering and noticed that all but one egg was gone. What ever it was covered its tracks by covering the one remaining egg.

This is not the first time a mallard nest in our yard has been destroyed, one time a nest by the mail box was destroyed. We think it was a racoon that time, as we had evidence of them being around, as we had evidence of the fox.

Mallards lay eggs every couple days this time of year, so perhaps this was a decoy nest. I don't know because I do not know much about mallards. I just hope that Henry and Henrietta were able to produce a few offspring.