What do ducks eat?

 

Back when I was eagle watching in Red Wing (click here to see), I discovered something about ducks.  Because these photos aren't that great I haven't wanted to share them, but I really want to know if I'm the only clueless one.  We all know that eagles eat fish (as seen close up in that previous post), but did you know ducks do too?



 

Am I the only who thought they were eating plants and algae when they went tail feathers up in water?



 

Ducks are omnivores!  Who knew?

Big and little

We shut done the little tank. Sold the baby convict cichlids and moved the little pleco to the big tank. He has lots of room to grow now. :)

Osprey with fish

We managed to get the bikes out on the trail a few days ago and wouldn't you know the ospreys are back and have a nest of babies. Daddy osprey caught a fish and was up in the tree with it. AND, because I was on a bike ride I only had the point and shoot with me, dang it!



I cropped one of the shots in - looks like he has damaged the fish. It sure was flopping about, but he held tightly to it.



We still have quite a bit of water around, probably because we keep seeing snow and rain instead of sunshine, and we ran into a "closed" sign on the trail. This means we only had a 10 mile ride.

Fish Pets

I enjoy watching this little scavenger keep the tank clean.

This is the little Indian Puffer fish that is smaller than my pinkie fingernail. So sweet. :0)

Lucky Mac

I shared our biggest fish, Big Mac, with you once before. But shortly after that, he got himself in a bind. One morning, we woke up and could not find him. Now come on, it's an aquarium, if he's not on the floor dried up, he's still in the tank. It took some digging but we found him under a shell (no longer in the tank), under sand and buried in the back of the tank.



Dennis freed him and we thought for sure he was finished. He scraped up both side of his body, this side was the worst.  I lectured him that what comes around, goes around, he's the one who hurt our blue lobster, Harry.





See, just a little on this side, near the fin.  For the rest of that day and most of the next, he laid on the bottom of the tank in his castle.  He would swim out in a circle every now and then, swimming back into his spot.  I was so scared for him!



It's been over a week and he's doing great now.  He was back up being himself by the third day and while his side is still healing, he's almost back 100%.  Stirring up sand, it's typical for cichlids to rearrange their environment. Since his incident we have taken nearly all the sand out, most of the shells are gone and we put 3/8" river rock in the bottom of the tank - it's what we normally use, we just tried something different and as Mac can tell you, it didn't work for us.



The "castle" is his home. He hangs out there a lot. Cichlids love to have hiding spots and get territorial over them. I love it when he slides up and peeks out the top hole. Crazy fish.



He loves to slide into this shell from time to time.



I think he has beautiful fins!



Go ahead, tell him how lucky he was.

Such a character

I really enjoy watching Puff Daddy play and I thought you might like to too.

Corn Puff

I got a new puffer fish, meet Corn Puff. He is an Indian Pufferfish and he's smaller than the fingernail on my pinkie finger! He's pictured here eating a freeze dried bloodworm.



He's so small we put him in the guppy tank to keep him safe and I keep losing him. He's smaller than the pebbles in the bottom of the tank. He's much smaller than the guppies.



As you can see, he's mostly eyes, lol. I haven't gotten any really good photos of him yet, these will have to do for now, he swims pretty fast and I'm having a hard time keeping up with him.



Here, I found this photo on another site, he says they are in a 2" bowl - these are the two different puffers I have too.

Big Mac Macro Monday

Mac is the biggest fish in our tank, but he's a gentle giant.

As we watched him swimming around we wondered if he had teeth, so I grabbed the macro lens.

Well that answers that, better keep my fingers out of the tank, lol.

Macro Monday is easy to play, snap a macro (or any close-up) photo, post it on your blog and come back here and sign MckLinky. :) MM started on Sept 29, 2008 - Thanx to all of you for helping make it such a fun start to the week!

smiles

It's important to keep things in your life that help you smile, things to inspire laughter and joy.  This whimsical little fish is one of those things for me.
~ You can see the explanation behind this project by going here or see the all posts in this category by going here.

Mac

Watching an aquarium full of fish can be so mesmerizing and relaxing.  I imagine that's why so many oncologists have tanks in their waiting rooms.

~ You can see the explanation behind this project by going here or see the all posts in this category by going here.

Magnet Macro Monday #122

I love playing with the camera! Shallow depth of field. . .

Huge depth of field.

I found a whole posse of adorable animal mini-magnets. I was especially attracted to the little ducks!

My mom collects frogs, so I had to share some of them with her.

The fishes were adorable too! I shared some with my daughter.

Even their bums are cute!  I shared some with my grandma.

Macro Monday is easy to play, snap a macro (or any close-up) photo, post it on your blog and come back here and sign MckLinky. :) MM started on Sept 29, 2008 - Thanx to all of you for helping make it such a fun start to the week!

Ember Macro Monday

Meet Ember.

You've met him once before in my cancer project, but I couldn't resist sharing him again.

Macro Monday is easy to play, snap a macro (or any close-up) photo, post it on your blog and come back here and sign MckLinky. :) MM started on Sept 29, 2008 - Thanx to all of you for helping make it such a fun start to the week!