Why this owl raised a duckling as its own
Wood duck parents don't put all their eggs in one basket—as brood parasites, they place some of their eggs in other birds' nests.
“Oh, we have an owl chick. This is wonderful!”
These were Laurie Wolf’s first thoughts when she noticed something small and fluffy bobbing up and down inside the nest box in her Jupiter, Florida, backyard. An eastern screech owl had taken up residence in the box about one month before, so she suspected it was an owl hatchling.
But the truth was far stranger.
As a storm rolled in and the sky darkened, Wolf and her husband caught a glimpse of the mother owl poking her head out of the nest box. And right beside the owl was a tiny, yellow-and-black duckling.
“The two of them were just sitting there side by side,” says Wolf, a wildlife artist and amateur photographer. “It’s
