young ducks

[ellenkushner]

It's early autumn. My heroine has been sent to the country, to a place that sure sounds like Normandy to me (lots of apple trees & streams & fields). Here's what I wrote a long time ago:

So I followed the stream into the woods instead, and found a little waterfall and a blackberry thicket with plenty of berries left, and a nest of young ducks (? well something more seasonal anyway).

Are ducks still young in early autumn? I just liked the way the words sounded, and the image - but if I'm about to make a fool of myself to people who know about ducks, can you suggest something else?

(NO ONE in my very erudite writer's group has taken up the challenge - various copies of the page have remained suspiciously pristine, despite my piteous little note in the text. I mean, if they knew the ducks were all right they would have said so, right??)

Comments

[kijjohnson.livejournal.com]

Where my folks live in northern Wisconsin, there are always a few ducks who for one reason or another start a second batch very late in the year. I've seen fluffy-type ducklings as late as early September.

[auroramama]

Thank goodness, someone who has actually attached a date to the second brood of mallard ducklings. I've seen them here in LI too (though I bet Wisconsin is more like Normandy than this is), but it may have been as early as July.

They do huddle in little flotillas.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Excellent!