You can’t blame the bird. If a wild duck alights on your sparkling blue pool for a quick paddle before zipping off, it’s an Instagram-worthy photo op. But when it’s a mama who’s also decided to build a nest in the backyard between dips, you’re stuck with a conundrum that will only continue to compound. In other words, in approximately twenty-eight days, you could wake up to find a passel of miniature feathered poop factories paddling around your lido.
Let’s say the quacker in question is a mallard, which, like all wild ducks, is protected by federal law. That means if you see evidence of a homesteading duck, you can’t just take matters into your own hands. You must act in accordance with the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, which codified a previous treaty with Canada, and similar treaties made with Mexico in 1936, Japan in 1972, and Russia in 1976.
So, yes, this gets a little complicated.
First, it’s technically legal to destroy a nest a duck has constructed on your property, but only if there are no eggs, says Hunter Morris, a waterfowl biologist for the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission. And you can encourage birds to skedaddle, “short of physical harm,” he says. “There are no legal issues with deterring them from building a nest.” But if Mom’s gone ahead and laid eggs, then you are both hamstrung and henpecked. Legally, you can disturb neither eggs nor nest nor Mama nor Pops without a permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Which, as it happens, does not issue permits to evict mallards from swimming pools.
If that’s the case, if you have a pool cover, deploy it. Once the ducklings are out of the nest, Mama will find them open water elsewhere. If you don’t have a cover, try introducing large colorful pool objects to their ersatz habitat. Large beach balls will work. A blow-up Wile E. Coyote float would be a slam dunk.
Hopefully, any issues will be short-lived. A duck can raise as many as a dozen ducklings, and a mother duck typically leads hers to water within twenty-four hours of hatching. But if you find them in your pool, Morris figures, they’re only there because it was the closest body of water around—a hen typically prefers actual wetlands and will seek them out as soon as possible. In the meantime, it’s important to add a ramp or other structure to the pool to help them waddle to safety. Ducklings are neither strong enough nor big enough to climb out of a typical pool on their own, and they might otherwise drown. A bloated frog in your skimmer is bad enough.
To help prevent ducks from putting down roots in your flower beds in the first place, consider placing an owl decoy or two around your pool or yard to toughen up the neighborhood. Keep your eyes peeled for the earliest signs of breeding birds: When searching for a nest site, mallard hens will usually poke their bills under bushes and into shrubbery, quacking often. That’s your cue to shoo them toward wilder environs. Gently—the neighbors are watching.
For more solutions to burning questions, explore our Southern Conundrum collection. Have a conundrum of your own? Email [email protected].
T. Edward Nickens is a contributing editor for Garden & Gun and cohost of The Wild South podcast. He’s also an editor at large for Field & Stream and a contributing editor for Ducks Unlimited. He splits time between Raleigh and Morehead City, North Carolina, with one wife, two dogs, a part-time cat, eleven fly rods, three canoes, two powerboats, and an indeterminate number of duck and goose decoys. Follow @enickens on Instagram.