Look on the Internet to find out if Magpie ducks will incubate (set on) their own eggs. As long as they are not in with a lot of other birds, I suspect that she would succeed in hatching her own. Sometimes they lay an egg every other day, until they reach what they consider to be a full clutch. Before they are actually starting to set on the eggs seriously, you'll notice that she will start building the nest and lining it with fluff from her own breast. This is, of course, if she will set on her own. I reckon that those eggs will be good for at least two weeks, while she gathers more. If you decide to use an incubator, I'd recommend one with a thermostat, hydrometer, forced air and egg turner; that is if you can afford it. I used to purchase the Styrofoam cheapo incubators, about every 12 months. They would get contaminated during hatching and after a couple of uses there was no way to use them successfully, as the eggs would become contaminated and cause sick, deformed chicks. Ducks require a bit more humidit'y for incubation, so you'd have to research that. I have hatched duck eggs under a broody hen. That works. But once they hatch, you have to take the ducklings and raise them yourself. The hen doesn't "speak the same language" as the ducklings. They don't communicate well and the ducklings abandon the hen after less than a day. Hope this helps, George

Butterflyman; Your friend is a lucky dog. That is a gynandromorph. Very rare and if he was of the catch, preserve, and mount type (of which this board tends to poo poo) he would be rich :)! A gynandromorph is where both male and female parts are exhibited. In butterflies where there is sexual dimorphism (females and males look different) this can lead to dramatic results. What you have a picture of, is a tiger swallowtail that was supposed to be a black morph female. Somewhere in its development, the genes for "female" became damaged and half the butterfly became male. Too cool and a once in a lifetime sighting... -Elisabeth Here is a link that might be useful: Gynandromorphs

Hi Dave and all, This was the first time for us to see more than one at a time also... the 5th frame (center bottom) actually shows 4 at once. It was getting kinda crowded in there. And I'm now very happy to report that all 5 eggs had hatched afterall... and all 5 chicks have fledged successfully as of @2pm today! :) So here are some more pictures of them... The first one to leave, (@4pm yesterday) hesitated, then stumbled on his way out and hung upside down from the hole for a few seconds, flapping in panic. We were caught totally off-guard and missed getting a shot of that frantic moment... This frame was just before that happened: But he quickly recovered, and safely flew to the Magic Tree: ...where he was immediately joined by both proud parents. The rest of the crew (4 of them) spent another night in the box, and Missy and Mr.B began feeding them non-stop starting around 5:30am this morning. Until 10:43 when our second contestant (another boy) made his debut: He flew over the house and into a tree in the front yard... I couldn't see where he landed and didn't want to miss the others fledging so I didn't chase after him. Interestingly, the fledglings from the first nesting were hanging around quite alot during this whole time... On the deck: ... on the gaslight: ... and on the nest box too. They've shown quite an interest in their new siblings all along, and parents have been fairly tolerant about it. The 3rd bird out was a girl, and she made an elegantly graceful first flight straight to the top of the RedBud tree: Where she landed on a very thin willowy branch and struggled to maintain her perch swaying in the breeze: The 4th and 5th birds fledged about 10 minutes apart, around 2pm this afternoon and I didn't get very good photos of either... not sure the sex on these two: Needless to say I'll be hoping to get a LOT more shots of all these new darlings. And we are overjoyed to have another successful fledging of FIVE! Kenn :)

Very nice photo of a cute little bird, who doesn't quite seem to grasp that it's standing on food. Claire