there is the Peabody in Memphis that uses their ducks as an attraction …Peabody Duck March
the ducks still visit the lobby fountain from 11am to 5pm. each day
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I might try and give your toddler a way to get their duck obsession taken care of without actually adding live ducks until the child is older?
Ducks are so messy and kids tend to pick up and sample things that look interesting or tasty and well, duck poop is just not something I would want to mess with possible ingestion.
My toddlers were fond of chowing down on the dogs kibble ( Old Roy) I would much prefer that to bird droppings or having them eat something unknowingly with duck poop on their hands?
I was not one of those paranoid parents by any means.
That’s awesome! The hotel I stayed at was in San Diego. I found out about their ducks because the first 2 mornings when I was heading out, the ducks were on the march to get their breakfast. There were a lot of them. Probably at least 20.
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Don’t get me wrong- I am a biologist by training and nearly went into wetland mitigation/environmental engineering before the pre-vet route got me (which I ultimately left for teaching science). I have no problem with wetlands or any jurisdictional classification myself. My only concern is property value just because people freak TF out if they think there is anything on a property subject to regulation that may encroach on their FREEDUM. 
The pond was a bonus in my eyes when we bought the land and I would like to keep it and maintain it as a healthy ecosystem.
…which is why I’d really prefer some ducks or geese (I say that last one with caution) just show up. 
Thank you for the link! The pond sections leave a bit to be desired. I don’t know what kind of SAV and aquatic plants may grow in the pond because I haven’t seen any. Otherwise it’s good native stuff growing along the banks apart from the fescue/pasture grasses in the area. I wonder if the DNR will supply me with some good native plantings if I asked.
Since there are some parcels of woods on either side of the property, a wood duck box might be a good addition, too.
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Believe me, usually I would be the first to agree. I know how fast everything and anything ends up in kids’ mouths.
However this is a large enough pond in the back of the property nearly a quarter mile from the house. I think it can sustain a couple ducks without creating a biohazard situation. It’s not somewhere we hang out for hours on end.
My nightmare would be 1000 Canada geese or snow geese showing up and staying, which is a very real possibility around here. 
My mother and I stayed there maybe 15 years ago? Very entertaining to watch the ducks!
I thought you had a bio background but my memory keeps getting shoddier as I age so… lol.
As far as resale, people generally only tend to recoil (usually wrongfully misinformed, but what else is new) from easements if they don’t fully understand how they work or if they just don’t care about anything except themselves. If it’s just nicely managed but unprotected habitat, people generally have no qualms about annihilating that however & whenever they want. Occasionally it can be stopped if there is a good local or state reg (rare), but again, an isolated, constructed pond is very unlikely (read: almost never & I only say almost bc I know better than to never on coth) to fall within that.
Another resource you might want to poke around in is Ducks Unlimited. They are hugely active in bolstering habitat restoration on private land, so they might have some good resources on their site. Another one to check is whoever is the land grant university in MD. That’s who deals with ponds in NC, my agency (state Wildlife agency) doesn’t do private ponds anymore, NC State handles that now.
You are right, wood duck boxes would be super easy (and they are the most gorgeous creatures! ), I keep meaning to put some on my pond (right after all my other projects, lol). I see wood ducks at work commonly on rivers, but I don’t know if there is a minimum size water body they will use or not - if you find out, do share!
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This is really easy. Take your toddler to tractor supply in the spring and pick out some ducks.
I LOVE ducks and wish I could have some right now.
Are there any other ponds, rivers, or wetlands close by? Your pond is probably a bit small to support a breeding pair of wild ducks.
Improving the clarity of the water would help to entice them, easier said than done.
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the Audubon websites are good resources for migration, habitat, food sources, etc.
You may have to consider the depth of the pond. Ducks like mallards and wood ducks prefer shallow water, less than six feet. If the pond is deeper than that you may need to look into divers that are around you.
Native aquatic vegetation as well as oak trees can be an attraction.
Decoys can certainly help attract them as well.
My parents have had a nesting pair of geese for about ten years at their farm. They’ve only been successful a couple times, too much predation. They have a hard time protecting the eggs.
They had free range domestic ducks in the biggest pond at one point. Bears were the biggest problem, they always figured out a way to get to the feed.
Yeah but my kid will be very sad to wake up to dead ducks when his mom doesn’t know what she’s doing!!!
There are a ton of small ponds, streams, marshes all around. We are probably 2 miles to the river and 2 miles to a large lake.
It sounds like our pond is perfectly wrong for ducks, being smallish and deep. Luckily bears aren’t a concern here. Birds of prey, foxes, raccoons, snakes, domestic dogs, toddlers… that’s about all we are dealing with.
I think I’m going to try to get more vegetation established along the shoreline.
If you could get the pond healthy than I bet you could get some cool diving ducks to visit regularly. Your pond should be long enough for them to take flight.
I would try putting out a line of decoys and see what happens 
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We had an alarming number of Canadian geese stay here every year since we had a large portion of our crop ground flood continually and it resulted in a huge low spot which held water . We finally got that graded out and they went up the road to the neighbors pond! I saw them as I drove by . It was awful!
I would worry about your ducks being eaten by predators? A friend and her husband had a lot of ducks and as long as the pond stayed unfrozen the ducks were safe. They had a pump and a pipe that came up at the center to keep the water moving.
One night the pump went out and they lost almost all of them to foxes and coyotes and they had a LGD in there as well. Just too much for him to handle.
It’s pretty rare we get a cold snap that lasts long enough for the pond to freeze over. It only gets that cold every few years. Last extended freeze was 2018. The past couple winters I never even got my water trough deicers out because it was so mild.
We also don’t have any substantial coyote population. Every now and then someone supposedly catches one on a trail cam, but it’s a rarity.
The birds of prey and foxes are real threats if I get domestic ducks. I would hope wild ducks would have some level of survival instincts.
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That would be SO neat. We get the coolest diving ducks around here, especially along the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays.
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Good idea! I can attest that yelling "hey, it’s safe down here, come hang out so I can stare at you! " as they fly over is 0% effective. I guess maybe they warned their friends I was a creeper, boo.
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About as effective as a toddler yelling, “QUACK QUACK QUACK!”
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I think that the last one to get back in the pen is always named Ping.
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As others said, try some decoys.
I live in VA, and while I’m not as well informed on Maryland laws and regulations as Virginia ones, I wouldn’t be too concerned about the pond being reclassified as wetland. Man made ponds for sport fishing are so, so common around here… if they started saying they were all wetland there would be a lot of really upset people!
The pond where I keep my horses is about 150x150. It has a pair of mallards that come every spring and have babies. They also get quite a few geese later on in the year. They have all left by now though.
Another thing to think about is contacting your local wildlife fowl Rehabilitators and let them know that they can use your pond as a release location.
If you do decide to get domestic ducks, try to only get females since you only want a couple-few. The males (drakes) breed the snot out of them and you really want like 10 females to a male, so fewer than that and they’re less happy.
As young ducklings, they will need a heat source (lamp, or be in the house in a container) and will take quite some care. Once they’re fully-feathered they can go live outside in your duck coop area thing. They do need the extra niacin, so try to get a duck-specific food if you can. If you can’t, an All Flock pellet or crumble is what you’ll want and you might want to supplement niacin, either with brewer’s yeast or by adding frozen peas (I’m not positive if this is truly sufficient, but it’s what all the duck folks online say).
Once they’re grown, they don’t need much besides feed and clean drinking water (in an open bowl, not a chicken waterer - ducks need to submerge their whole bills to flush their nares). And predator protection at night, especially (ie, lock them in).
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