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Here’s the story of Doris the duck and her nine eggs, as told on the BBC’s new nature programme, Secret Garden.  Narrated by David Attenborough, it shows how the ducklings “talk” to each other and so trigger hatching at the same time, so that all nine get to experience life simultaneously.  Of course, the mother duck does not have the father around, and looking after  nine ducklings present her with a set of big challenges. The first one is getting the ducklings from the nest to the water.  As they jump down, you will  be forgiven for keeping fingers, toes and everything crossed, but thanks to the cushioning effect of their downy feathers, they all make it to where they want to go intact. Phew!  

Mum Doris is waiting at the bottom of the drop to escort them the last of the way to  the water, and once they make it, she gets them into hiding as soon as she can.  There are predators about, and she wants to make sure they all her ducklings survive!  This is a beautiful piece of film-making from the BBC and I look forward to watching the rest of the episodes on iPlayer.  Let’s keep our fingers (at least) crossed that Doris and her ducklings make it through!

The Greater Glider is cute, but not many people get the chance to see one in the eastern Australian wilds it calls home.  They are shy, solitary and nocturnal, yet one thing is certain – this endangered marsupial species has adorable down to a fine art.  It was, until 2020, believed to be a single species, with variations according to habitat.  After careful research using high-throughput genetic marker techniques, it was discovered that the genus Petauroides was not monotypic – it did not contain a solitary species, after all: there are three species of greater glider. Image

Southern Greater Glider

So, what does one do when this happens?  Keeping things simple and straightforward is always a good plan, so we now have the Northern, Central and Southern greater gliders – named after the regions of the range in which they are found.  Just to make matters a little complicated, each species comes in two forms.  The central greater glider is usually silvery-brown, while the southern greater glider is especially well known for having both dark and pale grey-white forms (the variation seems to be a normal colour morph rather than a sign that they are different sexes or ages. In other words: some are naturally darker, some paler).