And the Mama Duck Said...

...Quack, Quack, Quack, Quack.

For the past couple of weeks, we've occasionally been seeing a duck (a female mallard?? I'm not sure) in our backyard and have been very surprised.  It's not as if we have a pond, or even a pool, in our backyard.  But we've enjoyed having her visit once in a while.

Yesterday, while attempting to extricate the gazillion or so weeks from our backyard's perennial garden, and while cleaning about a bunch of 'underbrush'-type stuff, Geoff discovered why this duck has been hanging out here...and, it wasn't because she thought we were good looking.  Hidden behind a small licac bush was this:

We haven't touched them at all for fear of it bothering the mother.  I have no idea whether or not any of these eggs will hatch, but it's kinda cool. I'm going to call a local environmental reserve and find out if there's anything I should be doing...like maybe filling a little kiddie pool with water so that the mama or her little ducklings have somewhere to swim!  Any suggestions?  What's the incubation period for duck eggs?

PS.  Not that I'm bitter or anything, but do you notice that even a duck can have a large family of little ones and I've been trying for eight years just to expand beyond my one?  Just an observation, mind you.

Note:  Three days after I posted about the duck eggs, we found them one morning all cracked open with the insides mostly sucked out...likely by the big crow that was still hanging around the yard when I found the eggs.  Poor mama duck.  Poor us, too - we were quite looking forward to the excitement of baby ducks in our yard.