I raise ducks, chickens, geese, pheasants and quail and if it's one thing I've learned over the years of taking care of all those birds, is that they all have personalities of their own and attitudes to match. They are also schemers who will try every trick in the book to keep you from locking them up in the barn each night. Trouble is, while chickens are diurnal like us, ducks are nocturnal, so they sleep during the day and want to stay up all night partying hearty. Being locked up in a stuffy barn during the best part of the day (the night) is not their idea of a good time had by all. To give just one example of what kind of scheming I'm talking about, we have two Mallard drakes who grew up together and they hang out together all the time. When I'm trying to drive them into the barn at night, those two confer for a moment together, then split up and start running in opposite directions, both of which lead as far as possible away from the barn door.
You can chase one but you can't chase both and they know it. Anyone who thinks birds are stupid, better spend a day or two on a waterfowl farm because they are so smart they definitely qualify for the title of "stinkers". I have found that the only way to get those two in the barn at more or less the same moment, is to scream at them to get in the barn NOW! When they hear that, they know that the jig is up, the game is over and it's time to do as the crazy woman says. They hightail it to the barn, each keeping at least one nervous eye on me to make sure I'm not about to explode or something equally as menacing. Mallards are natural stinkers, it's written into their genetic code, so they pretty much can't help it, but when the humans start stomping and shrieking, they figure even they better behave, at least for the moment. Humans seem kind of stupid to ducks so they believe whole-heartedly that we will probably forget all about it the next night when they will try the same nonsense again. It's like they always say, if at first you don't aggravate, try, try again.
This brings me to the dancing Mallard. We have a young female who was raised by chickens, (hmm, I wonder if that might have something to do with it?) and whenever she catches your attention, she starts doing a cute little dance. She stretches out her neck and coils it back up again like a slinky being stretched and bouncing back, and then runs as fast as she can in a circle around the object of her delight: Whichever human happens to be present at the time. This is how ducks dance, although I have seen Muscovy hens perform a much more sultry version that looks like something that belongs on "Dirty Dancing". (But it looks really cute when a fat little duck does it.) Anyway, this is how she distracts us from our mission, which is to get her into the barn as quickly as possible.
The ducks have to be accounted for because there are wild predators around who love fresh duck for supper, and I don't mean the two-legged kind either. So each duck must be counted after it goes into the barn, which is easy if your total flock numbers about twelve. When you have somewhere in the vicinity of sixty-five or seventy ducks, it's a lot more difficult, especially when the targets that you are attempting to count are moving. We use the breeds method: We count each breed of duck. If there are supposed to be seven Mallards, we look for seven stinkers, I mean, Mallards, even if a wild one should happen to have stopped in for a visit. That has never happened but with ducks, you never can tell. If someday we should manage to count eight Mallards we will assume that either Uncle Henry or Aunt Esther has come for a visit.
The most difficult ducks of all to count are the Rouen hens, which are larger versions of the Mallard. They are not quite as silly, but are very quick and tend to hide when you want them in plain view. We have ten of them, and we usually have to count heads at least ten times before we get our numbers right. The easiest birds of all to count are the geese because they stand nearly two feet taller than the largest of the ducks. It's difficult to hide when you're the biggest bird in the barn. It's also difficult to hide when you're the loudest bird in the barn. When the geese are around you'll know it, by the ringing in your ears. The louder you talk in order to be heard over them, the louder they scream and honk. Geese don't like to be ignored, and they really don't like to be interrupted when they are conversing in tones that can be heard on the moon. Geese don't care who hears them, they have no secrets, but they do have a viewpoint and you are going to hear it whether you like it or not.
