https://www.audubon.org/news/h...as-more-50-ducklings

Choppy waves bounced Brent Cizek’s small plastic boat as he headed for the shore of Lake Bemidji in Minnesota, hoping to beat a fast approaching summer storm. An amateur wildlife photographer, Cizek had decided to brave the late-afternoon winds to scope out the lakeshore for future shoots. He’d only brought one lens, thinking he might get a shot of a mallard he’d seen the day before, but wasn’t expecting to photograph anything special.

Then, as he motored toward the boat slip, Cizek saw something remarkable: a female Common Merganser surrounded by more than 50 little ducklings. While Cizek watched, the little mergansers formed a long, orderly line behind their mom and began swimming away. The scene was too good to pass up.

“I probably shot 50 pictures, and I was just praying that one was going to turn out sharp because the waves were so strong it was nearly impossible to even keep them in the frame,” Cizek says. To further complicate things, he had to alternate between maneuvering his little trolling motor and quickly snapping pictures. “Luckily enough, just one picture turned out.

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How will she be able to produce enough milk for all those babies?

quote:

Originally posted by arfmel:
How will she be able to produce enough milk for all those babies?

I'm a huge fan of duck milk.

Probably a duck foster mom, just trying to soak the duck foster parent system for cash.

Ducks only have like 25 nipples, right?

a little more to the story, from the OP link

While 50 is definitely on the high end, such big brood counts are actually pretty common, says Kenn Kaufman, field editor for Audubon. This is at least partly because ducks often lay their eggs in the nests of other ducks. In fact, Kaufman says a female duck will have a nest of her own and also make her way over to another nest or two to drop off a few eggs.

This behavior doesn’t completely explain Cizek’s photograph, though, because there is a limit to how many eggs one duck can successfully incubate. Female ducks lay about a dozen eggs and can incubate as many as 20, says Kaufman. More than that, and the birds can’t keep all the eggs warm.

The merganser in this picture probably picked up several dozen ducklings that got separated from their mothers. Adult ducks can’t tell which birds are theirs, and lost young birds that have already imprinted on their own mothers will instinctively start following another Common Merganser because she looks like mom.

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so jhe888 is probably correct

Always look calm on the surface, but paddle like hell underneath.

quote:

so jhe888 is probably correct

Pisses me off all these duckers trying to game the system...

I see John and Paul, george and ringo, I see Mick
and Keith Bryan and Ronnie,
oh and there's

Billy ,Dusty and Frank

I see Annie, there's Donna, there's Christina, and Leann and Patsy . . . . . . . . . .