TOUGH DAY

 When your day looks tough just remember what a REAL mom has to deal with!

AHHHHHHH GAWD

First 2020 Baby Peacocks at P2

This evening we saw the first batch of baby peacocks.... the moms brought them to visit us for the first time this year. We had a tiny puffball, and two older peacock babies. Music is "Mark King - Sailing Ships - Live" (c) Mark King 2020

June 29, 2020 Baby Racons!

Another great baby racon pic. I hope they come every day!

First Baby Racons 2020

Today, June 29th, we got greeted this morning with our first baby racons (raccoons :D).

Mom and four babies came to "hunt".  We love P2 baby racons!

Baby peafowl snacking

I accidentally hit the Slo-Mo button.... it's kind of fun to see the movement captured very S L O W L Y

One is Not Like The Others

A new duck family showed up today!

Mom, 3 black muscovy ducks, and 1 BRIGHT YELLOW muscovy duck.  Awww.  

Baby ducks morning bath

Five Peacock Babies!

We have our first five peacock babies!  On the way back from picking up the trash cans this evening, we saw a mother with her five peacock babies.  They look very new, probably only a day or two old.  We talked to the guy who owns the "peacock friendly" property to our west, and he clearly loves them as much as we do.

We look forward to another generation of our favorites huge birds, the peacocks!

3 New Baby Peafowl

We thought we'd seen them all for the year, and then a new mom just brought her 3 new ones to show them off.

These are tiny - smaller than the other 4 we've seen so far.

Baby Duck First Flight!

Yesterday, September 7th, was the first day we saw one of the duck family fly.  The family is now six baby ducks (mom left LOL), and yesterday one of the six took off flapping like crazy and flew a few low laps over the pond and the beach.  He made at least three laps, probably four, and landed in a bit of a crash landing in the northeast cove water.  The other ducks swam quickly over to "Flapper" and congratulated him in duck language on his dangerous and brave flight!

So amazing getting to see all this from the "control room" window where we're always hanging out.

Mark says Flapper did another lap this morning :)

UPDATE: FLAPPER FLIES AWAY!

We hoped it would never happen, and then in an instant he's gone. It's Flapper, he's flown away. Fortunately Mary was watching and saw his exit or else we would have thought something awful happened to him. Nope. In what appeared to be one of his low orbit "Wright Brothers" test flights around the big P2 pond Flapper powered up his engines and took off towards the east, away he went.

It was a joyous and sad moment as our little baby duck flew away, out into the cold cruel world. His five brothers and sisters swam out to the middle of the pond as if they were looking for him to come back but alas little Flapper did not return. Hopefully he found a big pond to splash down in.

Mary promised me Flapper would return Sunday (tomorrow) but I'm doubtful. He's gone out into the world to discover his fame and fortune. Good luck little guy. Hope we see you again. Thanks for coming to P2.

Q U A C K ! ! !

ANOTHER UPDATE: QUACK QUACK QUACK! FLAPPER CAME BACK!

Low and behold, we awoke sunday morning and to our joy and surprise little Flapper had rejoined his brothers and sisters, six little brown ducks swam over to the corn pile to nom breakfast, then they swam to the far end of the pond, got up on the shore in one of their favorite spots and took a nap.

Peace and Flapper returned to P2. Life is good!

First Baby Peafowl of 2018 - 8/24/2018

It's begun!  The mother peahens are starting to bring their babies to the P2 buffet for seed and other snacks.  Yesterday, 8/24/2018, we had the first sighting of a mother and baby wandering around the pole barn and starfruit tree area.  It didn't take long before the pair came around to the front.  You can see the baby on the left as a perfect scale model of the mom on the right, with the "ratty topknot" as clear giveaway that she's a baby.  Awwww!

Mark had just been lamenting the lack of peafowl kids visiting us this year and there they were, one after another came to visit. 

Finally we had a mother with three babies following her show up. When they're young peafowl all look like females. After a few more months the changes in color will begin and some of the young will transform into beautiful blue male peacocks. 

Mom and three young peafowl, the young are perfect scale models with full size feet

Young peafowl are really funny to watch, they don't know what they're doing but they are filled with attitude. Young pea kids run around in silly ways, like they're running from invisible ghosts. When they get older all that running around is chasing lizards and delicious bugs for food.

Notice how big their feet are, they are full size adult legs and feet

Mottled Duck Family Bath Time 7-18-18

Duck Family "Boating"

Awwwwww!

One Week Old Baby Ducks

The Florida Mottled baby ducks are growing up - here's a shot of them swimming and darting around this morning. They are getting fat on good American corn and delicious pond dabble treats :)

Mom and Baby Ducklings

Mama Florida Mottled Duck has had her crew here for three days, and we've been enjoying the magical guests while they're here.  They stayed through the fireworks show, which is a surprise, but I guess our pond was relatively safe compared to the rest of the city!

The six ducklings are so amazing to watch, swimming in formation or clustered together playing and eating.  Amazing closeup photos are coming, but here's a snack time video to start.

Wood Ducks 4-19-2018

WE'VE GOT DUCKS! WOOD DUCKS! AWWWWWWWWWWWW...

Here they are on April 18th, the first day we saw them.

Morning duck party at P2

Baby wood ducks

Male wood duck LOVES corn

Another quick look at the baby wood ducks...  The second the mom saw me, she led the kids back to the safety of the tall grass.

Soon Mom flew off for a few minutes, so I walked over to see where she "deposited" the babies in the  tall grass.  She came back shortly, and as soon as she landed in the water she called the babies.  Here's the sound she made.  They quickly came to the mom wood duck once they heard her call, and the family was reunited.

Baby Raccoons Feb 17 2017!

We saw our first baby raccoons this week on February 17th .... a  pack of 3 running around together.  One of the three followed mom closely, and the other two were adventurous, staying within 20 feet but not worrying too much about being beside her.  The one close to her ate Ol Racon, but the other two weren't hungry and probably drank all of the milk earlier.

So, for the future, we'll remember to look for babies early to mid February.

SEPTEMBER WEATHER CHANGE
August wrapped up the draught with Hurricane Hermine bringing much needed rain and unfortunate destruction North of our Space Coast location.

Outdoor temperatures also seem to have migrated down from 90+ into higher 80's at around 2pm on most afternoons.

We had 15 ducks visit yesterday, larger piles of cracked corn left on the ground seems to be their preferred eating platform.

The baby Peafowl are visiting more and more often, they are perfect miniatures of their adult parents, only their under-developed crowns give away their age.

And here is a blast from the past which was uncovered while updating baby iphone for Mary's new Apple Watch.

From our first visit to Florida Keys in May 2014, the Supermodel Meal In A Box 😎👍😎

BABY PEAFOWL VISIT P2

Today is the first day the female peahens escorted this years batch of pea babies to P2. It is a ritual we saw last year and they repeated it this year, after raising the babies somewhere out of sight the mother(s) finally take the babies on a trip to show them all their favorite haunts for finding food.

We saw them as tiny chicks back at the end of May, now look at them, the baby peafowl look like adults but they are only 50% size, perfect replicas :-)

This year I noticed their tail feathers are a little different, a couple of the babies have the longer straight brown feathers that stick out further in a way similar to the adult male peacocks. This leads me to wonder if these that look like little females now but have these long tail feathers will really turn out to be vesty little male peacocks when they get older, it will be something to watch for.

Cute Baby Raccoons!