On February 23, 1989, Rep. W. G. "Bill" Hefner of North Carolina introduced House Joint Resolution 153 in the 101st Congress, asking the President to designate the month of May 1989 as National Duckling Month. It was referred to committee, then to a subcommittee on March 9, 1989, and was never enacted, so the month has a documented introduction but no act of law behind it.
CHAPTER 01
The first hours decide everything
The earliest written account belongs to Thomas More, who in 1516 described incubator-hatched chicks following the first person near them. The phenomenon was later named and studied by the ethologist Oskar Heinroth.
His student carried it furthest. Konrad Lorenz shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for work that included filial imprinting in geese. Hatchlings raised away from a mother bonded to him, and in one trial to a box on a model train.
Ducklings live by the same rules. They are precocial: they hatch with open eyes and down and can walk, swim, and feed themselves within hours, unlike a blind, helpless songbird chick.
