Some pictures are better than a thousand words to tell extraordinary stories and to fix in time moments and events that are nothing short of breathtaking. Perhaps this is why once shared they go viral, spreading around the world, to the joy and satisfaction of those who have had the skill, intuition, and chance to take them.
Brent Cizek, the nature photographer who witnessed an unforgettable scene in Minnesota, certainly knows a thing or two about it. Anxious to capture moments of animal life on the lakes of Minnesota, he has succeeded, as evidenced by the photos that we are going to show you. What do they show? A duck that could be described as a ” super-mom ” in a truly memorable moment of everyday life, since she has dragged more than 70 ducklings in her wake!
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image credit: Brent Cizek/Twitter
Aboard his small boat, Brent embarked on a tour of Lake Bemidji in northern Michigan. “It didn’t seem like a good idea that day,” said Cizek, “it was very windy and the waves were moving my small boat all over the place.” Nonetheless, the photographer hung on and continued, and in hindsight, he did well.
As he approached one side of the lake, he noticed a scene that caught his attention. It looked like some sort of “gathering” of birds , from what he said, and as he got a little closer he could see the situation very well.
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MAMA MERGANSER! I was able to track down the now famous Lake Bemidji Common Merganser that has an adopted brood of over 76 babies! I love the story that these photos tell.
— Brent Cizek (@brentcizekphoto) July 17, 2018
Full gallery: https://t.co/wg8xioJBIG#audubonsociety #minnesota #bemidji #duck pic.twitter.com/c0Jycct4HX
image credit: Brent Cizek/Twitter
It was indeed an adult duck, and more precisely goose merganser ( Mergus merganser ) which had ducklings behind it. It might seem like a scene like any other, but Cizek quickly realized it wasn’t.
“The closer I got, the faster my heartbeat, because I had never seen anything like it before,” says the photographer. After he started counting the ducklings, he realized that something was really out of the ordinary: their number !
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image credit: Brent Cizek/Twitter
One after another, there were dozens and dozens of ducklings, and the total eventually rose to 76. This is a situation that can occur in nature, with ducks often welcoming the babies of other mothers, as if they were “nannies”.
Excited by what he had seen and photographed, Brent Cizek shared his snaps, which attracted huge numbers of people on the web, earning him international fame. And after this memorable experience, the photographer kept going to Lake Bemdji to observe the ducks. Regarding this duck, we can say that she is an exemplary mother-nanny !
Source:
https://www.brentcizekphoto.com/
https://globalnews.ca/news/4354274/mother-duck-ducklings-photo/
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/24/science/merganser-ducklings-photo.html
https://phlearn.com/magazine/the-incredible-story-of-50-no-wait-76-ducklings-images-by-brent-cizek/
Watch the video: