Sometimes, the stories out there in the wild can be tough to witness. We’ve probably all had that feeling when seeing the aftermath of a wolf kill, or the telltale signs of a hawk or owl that took some unsuspecting creature. I still remember years ago, on a small island in the Bay of Fundy, watching as common eiders (a type of sea duck) led their freshly-hatched ducklings to the edge of the water, only to see mobs of herring gulls swoop in, tearing the young ducklings limb from limb, or swallowing them whole in many cases.

Nature is hard, and it is hardest of all on the young, most of which experience short lives with unpleasant endings.

Recently, I witnessed the aftermath of what appeared to be a similar story, this time involving a suspected clutch of hooded mergansers on a beaver pond near the edge of the Lost Lake Swamp. I regularly don my camo gear and grab my camera and head for the pond to sit and watch. I’ve set up a small blind on the edge, which I can get to relatively easily without being observed by waterfowl or beavers that might be moving about on the pond. Sometimes, I get great photos. Other times, I just sit, watch, and listen to the sounds of nature.

One evening earlier this month, the bird song had mostly died down, save for the hermit thrushes. A decent breeze kept the mosquitoes mostly at bay. The pond was remarkably quiet, without any sign of ducks or ducklings, which I had found on previous visits in prior years. Over the winter, I had built and hung a duck house on a tree in the middle of the pond that had died when the beavers plugged a small stream and created the pond three years earlier. I had hoped it would attract a wood duck or a hooded merganser, but hadn’t seen any sign of activity so far this season. After sitting there a while, a broadwinged hawk flew in and perched silently on a tall birch snag still standing out in the pond. It sat there a long time, looking around intently, which told me that it was in hunting mode. I wondered if there might be a connection between this bird and the sudden scarcity of ducks on the pond.

A few days later, I visited the pond again, in the morning. This time, the hawk was nowhere to be found. Instead, my movements caught the attention of a female merganser, who had been quietly feeding along one edge of the pond. Rather than moving away, she started swimming towards me, probably mostly out of curiosity, a tendency I’ve noticed in ducks previously. I moved behind my blind and settled in to watch her. This time of year, an adult female merganser should have a bevy of little ducklings in her wake, but this one was all alone. Since hooded mergansers are cavity nesters, I suspect this female used the nest box I had erected. The surrounding terrain was logged about 20 years ago and it’s come back thick with young aspen. It’s paradise for a beaver, but it offers little in the way of nesting opportunity for a duck dependent on large tree cavities, which is one of the reasons I put up the duck box.

This female had almost certainly nested, probably successfully, only to watch as her young ones vanished one-by-one, in the sharp talons of a broadwinged hawk. As I watched this lonely duck on her pond, I wondered what or how she felt about it all. The more we understand the lives of animals, the more we come to recognize that they share many similarities with us humans— and a strong maternal instinct is one of the most profound.

Without her brood skittering behind her, this mother appeared listless, or lost. Ducks, in many cases, don’t live more than two or three years. There are lots of perils out there in the duck world. Most females only get one or two chances to successfully rear young, and for this duck, the opportunity was likely lost, at least for this year.

The situation impressed on me the ways that subtle changes in habitat can tilt the odds for wildlife. When the beavers first plugged the mere trickle of a stream that ultimately created the pond, it flooded a sizable thicket of alder, birch, and aspen. The flooding quickly killed the trees, but their standing dead trunks and branches provided excellent cover for ducklings for the first couple years. On my early visits to the pond, I had noticed plenty of mallard ducklings busily feeding and cavorting under the protective canopy all those branches created. But going on three years, many of those trees, shrubs and branches have since fallen into the pond’s dark water, and with them the protective cover for ducklings. The mallards had gone elsewhere this spring, perhaps recognizing how the pond’s value as a rearing ground had diminished. This one merganser, perhaps tempted by my nest box, hadn’t made the same calculation, and it’s a lesson she learned in a most painful way.

Over time, of course, the beaver pond continues to change. As ponds mature, emergent wetland vegetation begins to sprout, and that vegetation provides a new source of cover for nesting ducks and other waterfowl. Already, you can see signs of that transition in this relatively young pond.

It’s easy, from the perspective of a human who appreciates wild creatures, to see a predator like a hawk, a wolf, or a lynx as somehow destructive or cruel. Yet in nature, it’s all a question of perspective. The merganser eats minnows or frogs, which makes them a predator as well. And we certainly don’t deny the robin its worm. With the exception of herbivores, to be born into the wild is to be born to kill something smaller and weaker. It’s harsh— and it’s also nature’s way.