Covered in Feathers

My life is currently covered in feathers.

On a normal day, feathers are lovely, floaty and, in fact, amazingly designed things. This next month they will be the harbingers of evil. Okay, maybe not that dire. Well, for sure not that dire, but they can be a bloody nuisance!

Moulting Season

August means moulting season for the ducks. The boys in particular. It’s all about out with the old and in with the new. Autumn is when ducks pair off or. In the case of uneven numbers, the best-looking drake gets himself a harem. So there is plenty of incentive to preen, shed the old feathers and emerge looking as handsome as possible.

Unlike us, birds can’t just keep growing feathers forever. Feathers are made of keratin, the same material as our hair and fingernails, and once fully grown they’re effectively dead. They fade, wear out, break and lose some of their waterproofing. So every year ducks replace them with a completely new set.

Feeling Flightless

For ducks, this is no small undertaking. Growing thousands of new feathers takes a huge amount of energy, protein and nutrients. It’s a good time to up the anti on providing nutritious and fresh foods as well as vitamins.

Waterfowl also have a rather inconvenient habit of shedding all of their flight feathers at once, leaving them flightless for several weeks while the replacements grow in. It’s a vulnerable time, which is why wild ducks tend to keep a fairly low profile until they’re airborne again.

Pillow Fight Anyone?

There are currently feathers everywhere the ducks have been: in the garden, our honem my cave (yes, I have a cave)… and even places they have not been! The enclosed garden looks like somebody had a massive pillow fight.

If you didn’t know, feathers have little hooks on the ends of the tiny branches called barbules. These microscopic hooks zip neighbouring barbs together, creating that wonderfully smooth, waterproof surface that lets water roll straight off a duck’s back. During the moult, though, old feathers are loosening while new ones are still growing and haven’t fully “zipped up” yet. The result is less sleek waterfowl and more “just got out of bed.”

I mention this little-known fact because it also explains why feathers hook onto clothes, grass, clothes, hair, clothes, straw… did I mention clothes? Those tiny hooks seem remarkably effective at finding knitwear.

Let’s Add to the Melee

To add to the melee, my cat Lappy, who is normally quite a staid, happy lounge-about cat, decided to claw my feather duvet. It was quite the energetic activity for a normally sedentary feline. And the consequence was a whole series of holes. (You know where this is going, don’t you?) I have been sewing ever since.

Each morning, in typical French fashion, the duvet is flung, shaken and hung out of the window to air. Each morning I emerge covered in feathers as I discover yet another hole I somehow missed mending. It turns out feathers can escape through holes that are incredibly minuscule, let alone large ones.

Endless Feathers

So between the ducks replacing several thousand feathers each and Lappy enthusiastically liberating the contents of my duvet, I am currently living inside what appears to be a snow globe. Except instead of snow, it’s feathers. Endless feathers.

Follow this link -> for everything you wanted to know about feathers, but were afraid to ask.

More Duck Musings

You’ll find more on duck antics and what it is like to have pet ducks in my Duck 101 insights.

Should you enjoy my musings, consider nourishing Pumpjack & Piddlewick.

And should you be on the lookout for duck and other animal inspired gifts – you’ll find quite a few in my shop. Simply click on an image to see more…