March07

Thursday, 1st March 2007

Isn't it frightening how time flies as we're getting older. Granddaughter Emm became a teenager a couple of days ago
and Charlotte is going to be14 tomorrow. Signs of Spring are popping up all over the garden and the ducks are certainly feeling Spring-like.

It must be the mating season that's caused it - we're seeing strange combinations of groups. We've got used to seeing all 17 together at all times except evening, now they're often split into their own "hut groups" or we see a few here and there, even the odd one on her own. I've seen Blob being surrounded by 3 girls and Donald, who used to be so dominant, pursued and pecked by the other drakes. I've put together a little collage of odd groups, and in the bottom right one you can see one of the ducks investigating under the lonicera shrub where ducks have laid eggs previously:

I was pleased to find out that the camera worked very well when I'd set it properly to auto focus, thank you, Carl!, both from a distance and closing in with the telelens as below for the gathering at the frog pond.

All sorts of visitors continue to benefit from our bird feeding stations. I was wrong in thinking the pheasant population had been diminished - there were 11 around the birch near the garage when I went out to release the ducks this morning and I can see them hanging around the ducks' food trough several times in a day. One female in particular used to slip under a gap in the fence until I pegged it down, and then I would see the bird-brained thing running this way and that all along the fence looking for a way under - well, they only take to the air 'in extremis', don't they. I have a theory that pheasants will have lost the power of flight within a few hundred years. I wonder if it was this silly female who made this path along the fence: The arrow in this photo points to where the hut and the food is.

We get a lot of jackdaws, too.
I counted 9 in and under the birch
in this photo,

and the pesky little squirrels
make full use of the facilities.


But all activity around this popular birch ceases
when we see a particular predator flying around.
We think it is a buzzard circling, making those cries,
but we've also seen sparrowhawks about.

The mudflats at the field end of the duck enclosure have increased considerably in size because of all the rain we've been having. Not only all along the inside but the ducks have been "snorkling" outside of it as you can see in this photo below,but anywhere in field and garden where there are soggy areas - and there are plenty! I sink in all the time.

Oh, I nearly forgot to mention the eggs. Towards the end of February I complained to the top crowd that I'd found 1 egg in their hut on just 4 days, whereas the bottom lot had produced 3 or 4 daily. Promptly there was another egg in the top hut the very next day, and 2 on the following 2 days which took us into March. But I counted up the February eggs: 96 from the duck pond girls and just 5 from those behind the garage. Quite a difference.

As I'm writing this some of the ducks at least are taking a rest - I might do the same now!

Friday, 9th March 2007

The egg-laying in the top hut has gone from 2 a day to 3, 4, 5 and now 6. The girls there have out-performed the others for several days now. I'm impressed. Yesterday we had 11 eggs altogether - 1 more in each hut and it would have been a full house!

The drakes have got very possessive of their females and get to fighting if one of the other drakes shows interest in "their" girls, and although all 17 still go places together sometimes they mostly stick to their own groups. Took this photo early this morning of the garage crowd far into the 1st field while the other group were busy within the fenced enclosure.

This photo on the right is useful in other ways. Some of you may remember that I mentioned hacking down another "jungle" [22nd October 06], the one that separated our two fields. Well, comparing the same view on the photo below - when there were leaves on the trees - you can see that the clearance is almost done; you can see right through to the second field. I'm really chuffed with the work we've done.

I've had inspiration on another matter which bothered me when we had frost and snow. There were a great many blue, yes, bright blue, duck droppings, especially around the duck pond, which spread into patches of blue as the snow melted. I was worried, of course, and wondered what could have caused it. All the ducks and drakes seemed well, no sign of any trouble. I asked a couple of knowledgeable ducky friends [Caroline Crocker, thank you!] who thought it must have been a food source different from the normal - like berries for instance. The only berries they could have reached were Tutsan/Hypericum, but they were black and I wasn't sure they could have caused that blue stain.

And then, a couple of days ago, it finally hit me: the red cabbage! Here it is still growing
in the summer, but recently it's looked like this:


I've inserted a couple of close-ups to show that some of them have been nibbled down to their stalks. Of course, when everything was frozen or covered in snow that was the only vegetable matter they could get, and, as Caroline says, you get blue hands just chopping them up .....

Saturday, 17th March 2007 St. Patrick's Day

Well, there I was having mentally prepared a little "spiel" for these pages about the ducks' policy of Apartheid having been more enforced ............................ and what do they do first thing this morning? Go off into the field TOGETHER calling me a liar!

It's now a little later and they're back into their separate groups. It is quite usual, during the day, for one or other of the drakes to rush and make a raid to capture one of the ducks from the other group. Sometimes they succeed, but more usually the 2 drakes of the "raided" lot gang up together and try everything from head pecking to beak duelling to feather and wing pulling to fight off the perpetrator, and more often than not the "captured" duck gets away in the mêlée.

Since the groups separated Circle has stayed firmly with the lot behind the garage, she no longer vascillates. Anabelle however, the one brown duck among the 6 at the duck pond, still does her own thing and I often see her going off on her own. Here she is pecking among the slabs at the back of the house while the top 9 are resting under the Maigold rose:
She got into awful trouble when her own drakes found her!

The egg laying has been brilliant this month with the "garage girls" out-performing the duck pond ones in numbers if not in size. I don't think Fanny is laying yet, but the other six are. And with the 2 - 3 of the Campbells' and one from a runner we're getting 4 to 5 eggs from there, 10 to 11 every day - we supply lots of friends and family with eggs!

I tend to find the eggs in one corner of each hut, especially in the duck pond one. As they can be a bit dirty sometimes when they've been trodden on or even pooed on I thought I'd try a new trick yesterday after cleaning the huts. I put a cardboard box - on it's side - into each egg-laying-corner and made the bedding in it into a nice bowl shape, as the ducks have certainly been displaying nesting instincts in the open. Guess what I found this morning - ALL 11 eggs OUTSIDE of the boxes, but in each case somebody had been nestling inside the box! I'll persevere a little longer with this scheme; it always takes them some time to get used to a new thing.

Had some spaghetti left over from lunch yesterday, so I'll close with a couple of group pictures which I took when they came up to claim it:

Yes, you are very observant, there are only 7 in the photo on the right - Clarence was out of shot.

Wednesday, 21st March 2007

This must be the official first day of Spring. I should have known, really, as there was a layer of ice on the top pond and the buckets!

I'm very glad I persevered with the cartons for egg-laying in the huts, had a result this morning, see:


This picture is a bit dark, but there was more light in the top hut: 3 in the carton, as you might see, and two still outside. Unfortunately, whoever has been laying in there has also been shredding the cardboard. I'll have to knock up a wooden box instead or ask John to.

John reckons with this success I should get them trained up to lay straight into the egg cartons - oh yeah.

Sunday, 25th March 2007

I don't worry very easily, but I did worry this morning when something of a scene of devastation met my eyes down at the duck pond. Several of the branches stacked at the back had been knocked into the pond and some through the fence netting, bricks holding down the liner had been scattered, guy ropes been taken out - one chewed right off - and the bottom, non-electrified line of the netting chewed through as well as some of the old branches:

Could a rabbit have done that much damage and been strong enough to knock the branches and bricks about? And pushed under the chewed fence without being bothered about the electric current? Our first thought was "fox", but John patrolled all along and didn't see any sign of fox droppings. We are now wondering if a mink could have got in - we heard there were sightings in the area.

It's a mystery. Ducks and drakes down there don't show any sign of being bothered, anyway.

Monday, 26th March 2007

We lost Clarence last night. Going out to shut the duck pond lot in at just gone 7.30 [would have been 6.30, of course, the clocks having only just moved on 1 hour] we were met by Captain running up to the frog pond. We thought he was on his last "raid" of the day, but then noticed that his pal Clarence wasn't there with the 6 girls. He wasn't with the 9 behind the garage either, so the awful truth sank in. We could hear drake noises over towards the brook, and the 7 by the duck pond were all looking that way very attentively, but that could have been one of the mallards that's been around. There were lots of pheasant and other bird warning calls, too, and although that would indicate that the "deed" had only just happened John could find nothing when he patrolled around. But then foxes are very efficient killers as I recall when I followed the vixen carrying the headless Valentino away.

Rather than risk any more losses we drove a very reluctant 9 into the fenced area this morning on release. They've been busy ever since trying to break out of it and to avoid the rampaging Captain. They've not been in the duck pond yet, either, but give them time ......

I still don't know if yesterday's "battle ground" by the duck pond and Clarence's disappearance are connected, and I've wondered half the night what could have caused all that damage without any evidence of where the perpetrator got in. It is worrying. If a fox CAN get in while the fence is electrified then our little flock would certainly be 'sitting ducks'. But surely foxes don't chew the ends of thick branches and strip bark off in sections? Or chew the pegs off guy ropes?