Before I left, I happened to look out the window and saw a tiny baby duck in the big plastic kiddie pool. Phyllis, one of our rouen duck hens, has successfully hatched a single duckling. The poor baby was stuck in the pool and couldn't get out. Rather than just picking it up and letting it out, I put an upside-down terra cotta pot in, but the way the pool edge and the pot are both narrower at the bottom, it ended up too far from the edge. So I brought some little bricks over and stacked them between the pot and the edge of the pool. Baby duck could get up on the bricks, but wasn't making the jump from bricks to edge. So I added more water to the pool. Sure enough, when the bricks were just above the water level, then little duck made the leap and escaped the pool.
I also noticed today that Psy-duck (an unrelated rouen cross drake from another group) was missing most of the webbing between two of his toes on his left foot. It looks fully healed, but I suspect turtles may be to blame. Just yesterday #3 and I were watching several turtle heads poke up in the water as we planted the raspberry plant. Now I'm a little worried. A turtle big enough to remove all the webbing between the toes of an adult duck may be big enough to take out a little duckling. Good luck Phyllis! She seems to be a good momma so far. She stayed near the pool and kept talking to her baby until it was able to get out. She even went back into the pool a couple of times to try to show the duckling how to get out. It was adorable, but a little sad. I didn't want to stress her out but she was patient with me as I built up space for her baby to get out.