I have no idea where they came from, but at about 7:00am I was distracted from my computer by quacking in the garden. A family of ducks, Mum and six ducklings, were clustered about the small pond. The runt of the clutch, half the size of the others, couldn’t get out of the pond, so Mum wasn’t budging. There she is, above, giving me a good talking to as I went to help junior out of the water, a task complicated by the little creature’s attempts to hide by diving as deep as possible. In my pond, that’s not very deep at all.
Sorry the pics are such poor quality.
While I was dog walking, one of the cats must have tried to make friends, because there was a small scattering of duckling feathers on the lawn when I returned. But all ducklings are present and correct, so Mum must have fought the cat off.
They’re still out there, so if anything interesting happens I’ll update. I hope to see them on their way without casualties. The cats have a different plan, I believe. The dogs… well, the dogs are fascinated by them, but possibly in a good way. And possibly not.
UPDATE: They seem to have settled in. The cats have temporarily, I assume, lost interest and are indoors. The smallest duckling is the most adventurous. Oh, and ducklings do cute very successfully, especially when they stretch up and flap their stubby little wings.
(Why is this tagged ‘global warming’? I’ve never had ducks in the garden like this before, and I can only assume that global warming causes ducks. It causes everything else.)
UPDATE2: The duck family have moved on, intact and well fed (they liked wild bird seed mix).
