Two days ago I woke to find a story in The Canberra Times about a mother duck who returns each year to the Australian War Memorial to give birth to a brood of chicks in the Pool of Reflection. Because the mother duck is such a regular, Memorial staff have made a ramp so the chicks can get out – in the picture above, which shows the family hanging around the Pool’s eternal flame, the little guys are only 24 hours old. The staff also escort mum when she and the kids make the journey across a series of busy roads down to the nearby Lake Burley Griffin where she’ll do the actual raising.
It is, of course, an image of contrasts. Delight in a place of heaviness. A celebration of hope in an institution that remembers extraordinary – and potentially futile – loss.
The Pool of Reflection at the Australian War Memorial - sans duck family.
Yesterday, as I was walking around the lake, I saw coming across the water – yes, it was her…them! – the mother and her brood. I stopped to watch, as did three female joggers; the female joggers deplugged themselves from their iPods. The ducklings zipped here and there as if they didn’t have a minute to lose, all the while the mother kept a close, nervous eye on her charges.
Barely a minute later, the surface of the water broke and for a split second the joggers and I saw the mouth of a large carp – the bloody ugly fish was trying to take one of the ducklings. In a flash, the ducklings reformed themselves in a tight group and then the mother quickly escorted them to the relative safety of the shallows.
As I walked away I couldn’t help wondering if the carp had managed to score a duckling and drag it underwater, would the mother duck grieve for her loss?
Under the counter or a flutter in the dovecote 
9 comments
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September 22, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Sep
itallstarted
I like to think she would.
September 23, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Sep
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Agnes, I too like to think she would miss the lost one, but part of me wonders if she thinks to herself, ‘Well, that’s why I bring spares’, and then just moves on.
September 23, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Sep
Tim
I like to think the mother duck would open a can of whup-ass on the carp, saving her duckling, and no grieving would be necessary.
I live in hope.
September 23, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Sep
Nigel Featherstone
She’s a mean-looking mama (I saw her and the brood again today), so I reckon she’d give the carp a run for its money, bloody ugly things they are.
If the world was properly balanced, there’d be more ducklings and less carp. Someone should legislate for that.
September 24, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Sep
Gabrielle Bryden
I don’t know – maybe for a short time – not sure how smart the duck is! My heart always misses a beat when I see ducklings trying to cross the road – they are so small and vulnerable, but the fact is quite a number of young will always get picked off.
September 25, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Sep
Nigel
Hi Gabrielle, I wonder if grief is about smarts or heart? But I also wonder if that fact that she has such a large brood, and that she does it each year, negates any trauma she feels when her numbers dwindle as spring progresses?
September 26, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Sep
Gabrielle Bryden
I think there has to be some relationship between intelligence and grief. It is only the very intelligent animals such as the elephant that displays grief comparable to human grief. Other animals do but to a lesser degree and instinct would be kicking in with a lot of animals and insects. What we see as grief may just be separation anxiety (with the animal not having a concept of finality which humans and some very intelligent animals may have). The duck would have a strong instinct to protect her young, but not at the detriment of the group of young. It is interesting that primates like the chimp which have a long gestation period and one baby, often have greater emotion on losing the baby – there is definitely a greater investment in the baby – there is more to lose when there is only one baby.
September 30, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Sep
Nana Jo
Isn’t it gorgeous the way that even in this jaded world, people can ‘unplug’ and take the time to watch and value a mother duckling and her babies?
Sometimes I wonder what right I have to prefer one of earth’s creatures to another? Yet, of course, I do. In a primal way, the mother duck grieves. In the infinite abyss of hunger all may only acquiesce at times.
September 30, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Sep
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Nana Jo, interesting that you picked up on the fact that the two (very fit, very serious) female joggers stopped, removed their earphones, and took a moment to check out the mother duck and her brood. Perhaps it’s because it’s just turned spring in this neck of the woods, and the world’s economies are fragile at best, and we’ve just been through a pretty horendous federal election campaign, so signs of hope are very welcome.