Hatched at the hospital

The ducks are back at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank.

It marks the third consecutive year that a family of ducks have made their home on the grounds of the medical center campus. A mother duck last year commandeered a third-floor maternity ward balcony to hatch nine ducklings, and 12 in the same location the year prior.

While the environment this year is more suitable for the water-loving foul, it’s not ideal, hospital officials said. Over the last three weeks, a mother and father duck hatched 13 ducklings at a newly constructed koi pond in the hospital courtyard. One was killed by a hawk, nurses said.

“We have no official position on the ducks — other than to say that they’re cute,” said Mary Ann Madden, a marketing coordinator at the hospital.

Observing the family of ducks has become a favorite pastime for doctors, nurses and patients, spokeswoman Patricia Aidem said

Two years ago the ducks were promptly removed by animal control officers, but were allowed to stay last May after hospital administrators unsealed a balcony door. They were finally released into the wild after about eight weeks.

Experts at the Los Angeles Audubon Society said state and federal regulations prevent the public from disturbing a nest and hatchlings.

Before the ducklings hatched they informed hospital officials not to let the ducks nest. Now, it’s too late.

Aidem said the medical center’s director of plant services was told by experts that the ducks would leave on their own after about three months.

Jerome Scott, whose wife checked into the medical center last week and remained through the weekend, said he was more than fine with the ducks at the campus. He visited the ducks while eating at the cafeteria last week, calling their presence “relaxing, something to take your mind off of things for a few minutes.”

Nurses, too, have been enchanted watching the ducks grow up. Cheers and hollers could be heard as the ducklings attempted to hop a short ledge to the pools, or flap their wings for the first time.

“Honestly, the morale has been tremendous,” Aidem said.

Dubbed last year as “Momma Duck and the hot wings,” the family has become somewhat of an annual fixture. Nurses and physical therapists reported using the ducks as motivation when trying to get their post-operation patients to the end of a hallway.

Staffers last year began feeding the ducklings crackers, until someone last year brought in a 25-pound bag of feed. An anonymous donor dropped off a swimming pool, and a receptionist in the neonatal intensive care unit sketched the family in yellow marker on official census boards.

Some wondered this spring if it was the same mother who returned to the grounds to hatch her eggs.

“I guess we’ll never know,” Madden said, as a group of ducklings sprung from under their mother into a pool of koi. “But it seems to be peaceful co-existence for now.”