Ducks and People

On a recent beautiful summer morning, I visited a Pond near me to see if the ducks were still floating there.  Instead of the six or seven tiny newborns I'd seen in late Spring, I found thirteen sturdy-looking, self-confident ducklings.  They all looked alike.  I asked the man cleaning the Pond how to tell the males from the females and he told me to look at their beaks and their tail tips.  The beaks of the males are lighter, etc., and, at four months old, they are still developing.  When full grown, the male ducks sport gorgeous colors, while the females remain a variegated brown color.  I don't know why six or seven baby ducks have now become thirteen almost full-size fowl.  Something must attract them to the Pond.  One clue is the sign that says, "Please do not feed the ducks", something bystanders surreptitiously do anyway.  The Pond keeper told me that if the ducks are fed at the Pond, they won't leave to find the food waiting for them in Nature.  In other words, they come to expect  complacently  that people will throw food their way.  Not a good thing.  These ducklings need to grow up and face the world out there, just like people.