Left behind

Visited friends in Oratia (just 10 mins away) for lunch. Three Australian magpies visited a tree close to their house. While I was fetching my camera from the car the parents departed leaving the juvenile behind. It left after a few further minutes.

Later, as the light was fading quite quickly, I went for a walk on local streets, where I watched a mallard duck escorting her five ducklings out of a ditch with a lot of water, and up the grass slope from it. Initially only four made it up the steep bank, and the fifth paddled rapidly backwards and forwards, with mother calling encouragement. Eventually, it found a way up through overhanging reeds, and morther departed with all ducklings accounted for.

Can ducks count?