The blue hose on the right of this picture is drying out from this morning. Because it had gone so well and easy on Thursday when I cleaned out the little pond I thought I'd tackle the much larger frog pond this morning. I switched on the pump at 09.13 and 20 minutes later it had been emptied..I thinned down the gloop at the bottom with water and pumped again, but I left the last few centimetres of mud for next time!Around lunch time the pond was half full again and our troupe of 9 came up. Both drakes dared take a few steps onto the bare liner and stood and stared at the water below. It looked so funny I dashed into the house to get the camera, but of course they'd gone when I came back and all 9 had settled down for a snooze.
After lunch I was out again, weeding behind the pond. It was Primmie who went in first, at 20 past 2. The pond wasn't full yet but the water level was within reach of her beak. She'd come to drink, but decided to sail in then. Fanny saw her and followed, and 10 minutes later all 9 were in. I only turned off the water at quarter to four, though, when the pond was full to the top.
I just wanted to take a quick picture of the nine swimming ..............
...... but they jumped out in a hurry as if I'd caught them red-handed at something:
Blob is the one standing up very straight in this photo and BBD is protesting loudly. By the way, he's not been limping for two days now; Hedda has started instead ...
While we were still drinking our cups of tea outside Anabelle came ambling up on her way to the food. She kept looking round a bit nervously, but then Captain appeared to give protection to one of his women.
I did wonder how long he'd manage to stand there and play the big protector, before the urge would grab him once more and he'd go off pirating. You can see in this picture that he's already looking in the direction of the 9 at the frog pond - a few seconds later he was gone and Anabelle came back on her own
A little later, as I was going through the garden taking a few photos, all four of them came up, a little hesitantly.
Both groups are a little afraid of each other now and avoid each other. The fights on top of some poor duck or other don't seem so bad now, either.
The mallards seem to have made the big pond their temporary home, there are always one drake with two females or just one female followed by two drakes; the local four don't chase them away - at least I haven't seen them doing it. What I did see, however, was how bold at least one of those little drakes is. He was on his way to the food container and the group of nine were lying quite peacefully by the frog pond. The mallard drake assumed an extremely aggressive stance - head down, beak open - towards Fanny who was an innocent by-stander. Fanny wasn't going to have that and assumed aggressive stance herself ...... but she was no match for him, he was more persistent and she beat a hasty retreat. And what did our brave two runner duck drakes do in this situation? NOTHING! It confirms what cowards they are - I have seen several times how a single mallard drake fought the whole group away from the food!
Our Morf, who only recently nearly died on us with having an egg stuck, continues to present us with FIRSTS, yesterday she was in the fish pond! Well, I am sure that none of our ducks or drakes had been in there, or even near it. And I also found two more eggs in that nest I photographed her in last weekend:
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