May10

Saturday, 29th

FINALLY! We have rain. The weather forecasters promised it before and it never came to us. But this morning I'm delighted to see a good wetting of the garden and the duckies are so busy snuffling through grass and borders that they've barely got time to look up:

Wednesday, 19th Eleanor's birthday

I had a little amble around the garden yesterday morning. At the duck pond there were only 3 to be seen - where was Anabelle?

I checked all the possible places and eventually heard all this shuffling and scratching in the
duck hut, but she herself could not be seen in this pile of straw in the nest box. She must have heard me though, as she came out to check and then went promptly in again.

Question now is, was she just laying or is she feeling broody again like last year when we found her nest in under the holly edging the formal garden.

Returning to the house I saw this little lot around the water containers - only Blob was still in the pond.

Saturday, 15th Friend Pine's birthday

I spent many hours today digging out grass turves [Anabelle and her mates were very keen to find worms underneath] and positioning them again along the pond edge to hide the liner - everything from last year had been nibbled away. I fastened some much smaller diameter netting over the top and hope it won't let those probing beaks in!

In the photo below the arrow on the left points to a gap I left in the grass verges for easy exit for the ducks, and the one on the right shows where I'd put the little waterhen chick. It was still there; John gave it a decent burial.

The roll of finer netting I bought can be seen at the left of the hut. It's 2 metres wide and I've only covered three sections with it so far - about a third of what I want to "hide". So it'll take a lot more grass turves and I've got to buy an awful lot more pegs to pin it all down!

John took the three photos in this entry, so I thought it only right to show off how well he's organized his vegetable patch near the duck hut:

While we were both working in the same area John was delighted to see a waterhen chick swimming FROM the ditch side INTO the island, and also to hear youngsters cheeping in a nest in the laurel hedge at the bottom of the formal garden and hedgesparrows flying in and out of it.

Wednesday, 12th

History repeated itself yesterday, same as end of last April. Our neighbour brought a tiny waterhen chick which had been carried home by one of their cats. He said they didn't mind what I did to drive their cats away, they wouldn't be offended. But what can we do? Both cats are constantly hunting near our bird food birch and all along the ditch where the waterhens are.

The little chick was chirping vociferously all the way to the duck pond and carried on noisily after I set it into the water near the "island". It swam quickly to the middle but couldn't clamber over the surrounding netting. Then it swam right across the big pond, and I could clearly hear the answering call of an adult. At the far end the chick couldn't climb the net into the bog garden, so I lifted it gently and put it among the dense iris leaves. THEN I saw the white and ginger cat ready to pounce and had to drive that away and - hopefully - block the hole in the fence it had come through.

I left the little one among the greenery so that the adults could come and entice it home. I was bitterly disappointed at duck bed time when I saw the chick, still in the same place where I'd put it, but dead.

Sunday, 9th

The photo above with a close-up of the larger group of ducks was taken on 1st May, I'm sorry to say I have not taken any during the last week. It's easy to see how the season is racing along in these views, no sooner has a tree or shrub erupted into blossom than it's finished and another lot is out. It seems as if nature is trying to catch up fast after the harsh winter.

Our two ducky groups are still separated although Captain and Anabelle do get out now and then and can't find their way back in, and Hedda still visits the island and can't get out again without help. All ducks and drakes appear healthy and none of them are limping, long may it continue and here's hoping that the drakes' hormone levels will go down soon!

Our "ducky friends" from Germany, Petra and Klaus, stopped off again last night from Scotland on their way home, and just like during their last stay we spend hours playing Mexican Train dominoes ...... they're as 'hooked' as we are: