Last week I noticed a duck nesting in our back yard, near the wall of the garage in a thicket of tall grass that doesn’t seem to be coming back as robustly this year as usual. I was moving a plastic sandbox toward the garage door, with a mind toward taking it out and leaving it for the garbage collector, or someone like the fellow who recently took our plastic kid pool before the garbageman could get to it. I looked down and there was the duck, fairly well camouflaged.

A few weeks ago, a duck and a drake spent time in the back yard sometimes, especially when the heavy rains left large puddles. Could be this is the same duck.

I left the frog-shaped sandbox near the nest — the green curve in the picture, though it looks closer to the nest than it actually is — and then put a couple of other sizable objects nearby to make a perimeter around the nest. My thinking was to discourage the dog from approaching the mother duck or her eggs.

That might not have been necessary, though. I’ve been watching the dog as she’s been in the vicinity of the duck, and she seems leery, very unlike her reaction to, say, a squirrel or a mouse. Maybe, in whatever way they have, snarling dog and hissing duck have reached a truce. That would be good. I figure an enraged duck, who can carry out air strikes and other attacks, might be able to do the dog some harm.

Occasionally during the warm afternoons, the duck isn’t on the nest, and I see she’s warming several eggs. I’m not sure why, but it’s been a good year for fecund birds in my back yard.