On Saturday we saw three little ducklings swimming alone on the river. Worried for them, we followed to see where they would go. After some meandering, they reunited with the mother duck and returned to a little floating wooden duck house, tied to a houseboat.

Duckling update: today it was windy and the ducklings were all hanging out on the little "porch" of the duck house with their maman.

Duckling update: the three ducklings were off on their own again, exploring the coves between the houseboats and hanging out with a moorhen, while maman sat relaxing on her little porch.

Did not see the ducklings today, but I was out later than usual, so they may already have been sleeping.

Duckling update! Three little ducklings are getting bigger but are still fluffy. Were off on their own again (this seems to be their daily thing) and then we saw them reunite with their maman, get cleaned up and ready for bed, and go into the duck house for the evening.

(People have been asking for pictures of the duck family and their little floating duck house, and this is truly a Loch Ness Monster level bad picture of them, my phone is very limited, but here you go. They are cuter in person I promise!)

There was so much duck drama tonight, I can't even get into it. Everybody is safe, I think, but there were some surprise twists

So, not even sure where to begin with the duckling update.

Last night we had a belated birthday dinner picnic for M under the willow near the Pont Royal, and then after we finish he says, hey, should we go see how the ducklings are doing? And I'm like, sure!

So we head over to where we usually see the ducklings, among the moored residential boats. We check a couple little coves between the boats & sure enough, there are 3 ducklings. They're huddled together, cleaning their feather fluff while standing on a rudder thing. Super cute.

We're watching them when we start to wonder aloud, are we really sure these are always the same three ducklings? The ones that live in the wooden house must be the same, but what about these? So I stay there while M goes to see if there is another set at the duck house.

While he's gone, I'm watching the little huddle of fluff when suddenly maman duck comes out of nowhere, charging into the duckling huddle, super mad! She's yelling! The ducklings scatter, and there are four! One of them is slightly smaller than the others!

The three slightly larger ducklings fall in line behind maman, while the smaller one swims away. But then the littler one is making tiny quacks and tries to rejoin them all, and maman duck charges at it and yells again, so it goes away crying. (I know, I was like )

At this point I'm not sure whether this is a runt of the brood that she is chasing off because nature is cruel, or whether this is some other duck's baby. She was SO MAD that her babies were hanging out with this other baby, she was like WHAT HAVE I TOLD YOU ABOUT SEEING HIM?!

Anyway, maman duck heads off towards the wooden duck house with her three ducklings in perfect line behind her for once. But I can still hear the little rejected one crying even though I can't see it. And this is where I might get a little annoying for some people, but oh well.

I started trying to imitate the duckling noise, because I noticed that they did this to locate each other. So it starts talking back to me and comes around the corner of a boat again looking for the source of the sound, which sadly is me and not another duck. It's looking around!

So I keep making the noise, and it keeps frantically making it back at me, and it's not entirely impossible at this point that M was going to come back from checking on the duck house to find his deranged wife standing on the banks soaking wet and holding a baby duck. But wait!

This little duckling is essentially yelling at this point, which was maybe good because poof—suddenly there appear two *other* little ducklings the same size as this one! They have an attitude of "excuse me buddy where the hell have YOU been?" They are greeting each other.

So that answered our question—yes, there are at least 2 sets of 3 ducklings living in that area. No, they are NOT allowed to hang out together just yet. We didn't see the mother of this second set, but they seemed like they were doing okay for now. At least they have each other.

Duckling update! We went and checked on both sets of ducklings today. The littler ones were still on their own, but were all together and looked like they were doing well, very active. The older ones were with their maman, and they have grown so fast. They're learning to dive.

We read online that you're supposed to feed ducks lettuce, so we brought some chopped up lettuce with us today. The ducks were very excited that we were giving them something, but fairly disappointed that it was lettuce. Similar vibe to trick-or-treaters who receive raisins.