A new Muscovy family joins the backyard

We really didn't need more Muscovy ducks in the backyard but it appears that a new family has joined our little group.  Late yesterday afternoon a male swam up with his little harem of 3 females.  They were back several times today and now I think they are hanging out nearby.  One of the girls looked a little like Pretty Girl's daughter Little Sis but it wasn't her on a closer look.  One of the girls is almost entirely black with a white stripe on her beak.  She is the smallest one.  And the third has no really distinctive marks.  All the girls look pretty young. In contrast, the male is very distinctive looking, having a red circle of caruncles around his eyes.  It is so unusual that I am going to call him Red Eye.

New family arrives at the backyard

A Little Sis look-alike but it isn't her.

The new male with the red eye circles

The family was around several times today and in the evening Red Eye came back without the whole harem and just with the one black female who is a bit timid but cute.

Sweet little girl with her man

Another random Muscovy male who is extremely handsome also came to the backyard this evening.  You could tell he knew how good looking he was as he strutted all around like he was all it.

Devastatingly handsome but stuck up too

There were relatively few others around, just Blanco, Black Foot, Lazlo, Big Boy, Pretty Girl and Sweetie.  Chirpie has not been here for quite few days now.

Today we had 23 mottled ducks in the backyard at once and of course there was a lot of fighting among them.  There were more mottleds than Muscovies this morning.  I think we are already in the situation of having too many.  Will it keep growing to the 40+ we had in the past?  Hopefully not.

The anhinga, Ani, took up a spot on the dock post by the squirrel feeder this afternoon.  I guess she wanted to try new things because she never perched there before.  She didn't like it because she soon did a tightrope act slowly walking sideways down the railing to her favorite lower post.

I saw a pretty flower on the ixora plant that was recently trimmed back and I didn't expect to bloom for a while.  They are a really pretty color, with large clusters of small blossoms.

Pretty in pink

Today there were two female boat-tailed grackles in the backyard so the numbers are slowly increasing.  There will probably be a major grackle influx one of these days.

I saw something a little unusual on the old boat.  There were some grackle footprints in the mud - they have really big feet - and they were partially filled with water.  It wasn't, of course, but it looked kind of like fossilized footprints to me.

Gallinule footprint "fossils"