Wildlife and Healthy Eating

My baby wrens hatched, and are little fuzzy gray things with big beaks. Their eyes are not yet open, and they never make a sound. When mom comes, they stretch their little necks and open wide. When she leaves, they settle in on the floor of the nest. From my eye-level vantage point, they look a little like the kind of mold that grows on rotten fruit. I'm sure they'll be cute one day!

We have new baby ducks at the pond, and I'm saying a lot of prayers for these eight little ones. I saw the Blue Heron again, but I never spot it until it gets spooked, rises up, and flies away. I never have my camera ready! Otherwise, I've been communing with the Canada Geese, bunnies, and bull frogs whom I hear but can't see in the tall grass. Sounds like a deep, deep kettle drum, or some otherworldly base instrument!

I've been trying to cut back on desserts. After losing so much weight last year, I have felt a bit immune to gaining weight, but I need to get back to rationing sugar and chocolate. I'm not a dieter, but am a label reader. I try to limit calories, trans fat and saturated fat, cholesterol, and sodium. I try to include lots of fruits and vegetables, calcium, protein, and whole grains. I'm growing to like Silk (soy milk). It is high in protein and calcium, and is lactose free. It tastes more like raw almonds than milk.

In reading labels, I discovered that a single egg contains 213 g of cholesterol, and the recommended daily limit for anyone with borderline or high cholesterol is 200! The limit for "normal" people is 300, so one way or the other, two eggs in one day far exceeds the limit for anyone.

In this long economic recession, I have to focus on and appreciate the small things that make me smile and enrich my life. My niece shared this web site with me, and I've spent too many hours reading and laughing and crying over these hilarious iPhone auto correct disasters: http://www.damnyouautocorrect.com/ . I think I'll make it part of my morning routine to read (1) Daily Word, and (2) Damn You, Auto correct!

Feeding Wild Ducks

Our baby ducks haven't had good luck this year, and we don't know whether to blame snapping turtles, hawks, ground water pollution, or all of the above. The first family only hatched two, and they were gone within three days.

The second family of thirteen didn't fair well at all, and by the time the mother had orphaned or abandoned them, only three ducklings remained. They were aggressively rejected by the mother of Family #3, and actually survived on their own for a few days, staying together and doing the things their mom had taught them. Eventually, Mother #3 allowed them to join her brood of seven.

With the combined families, we are back to only seven. The babies are teens now, and it's difficult to tell which are from Family #2 vs. Family #3. One has been lame for a couple of weeks, but he seems to manage OK in the water, and limps around on land. I pamper him and all the rest of the teens and their mom.

I'm still amazed at the number of people who bring big loafs of white bread, throwing it in big chunks into the water. First, it may fill the tummies of ducks, geese, fish, and turtles, but white bread is not healthy or nutritious for man nor beast. It causes water pollution, introduces additives like sodium to their diet, and deters them from finding and eating what they should be eating: PROTEIN. Normally, this would come from insects and larvae in the water.

It's recommended that wild ducks and geese not be fed by humans, but if you must, please feed them something that could be part of their normal diet. Feed stores sell domestic duck and goose feed pellets. PetSmart usually carries a Duck and Goose blend with whole dried corn, wheat seed, and milo seed. We usually buy a seed blend and mix it with cracked corn, which is less expensive. We purchase ours at Ingles. It is labeled as "Scratch" in the pet food department.