Thursday, 9th June 2011

Every time I look into this blog and see the brilliant photograph Carl took last October it grieves me to see that all but 3 of these lovely creatures have gone.  Candida, in front, is still with us and the only drake from our 2005 hatchlings, Captain, as well as our last Campbell, Hedda, whose beak you can just see behind Candida's head.  And we're lucky to have our 2 new girls Anke and Lane [from a farm in Anchor Lane].  They have integrated very well, and it's time I showed a few photos of them.

These two photos are from when we were still keeping the food box up near the house in the hope of keeping unwelcome "guests" away from it.  It didn't work, the guests still came - the mallards being persistently cheeky - and as Hedda was still showing a slight limp I wanted to avoid her tramping up the 60 metres or so from the big pond every time she wanted food.  Unfortunately all of them are so used to having food always available that they would come up to the sunlounge door demanding it whenever we'd removed it from near their pond!
There must have been some food spillage in that area and a certain two pheasant ladies remembered it.  When we came back from our walk with Eleanor on Thursday 2nd June we were treated to the sight of one female pheasant running away from our house with two cute little chicks in tow, and on Sunday 5th another one was right in front of the sunlounge steps with 2 even tinier chicks ..... by the time I'd fetched the camera they'd run off into the garden and cover.

The next four photos of our remaining 5 were taken by Eleanor last week:

 [Can we have a caption competition for this one, on the lines of "go away, I'm having a rest" maybe?]

   

Nearly two weeks after Taffy died - the last of the group of nine - we can thankfully detect no signs of the dreadful virus in our last five.  We've not seen as many mallards in the last few days, either.  Whether they've moved on or have been killed off we don't know.

An interesting bit of news came to us last night, friend Edna came to collect me [with computer and screen and other paraphernalia] to give a talk on making gingerbread houses to a Women's Group [yes, I do know it seems strange in the middle of summer, but I have an appointment for the same talk on the more suitable 5th December, Gerd's birthday], and she mentioned that she'd read in her paper that many of the Queen's swans had died of this same virus that had killed our 9 ducks/drakes.  So this morning I googled for info and yes, it was true, several papers and web sites mentioned it:

More than 180 of Britain's Queen Elizabeth's swans have died on the River Thames due to an increase in the duck virus enteritis.

Around 180 of Britain's Queen Elizabeth's swans have died due to an increase in duck virus enteritis.

The mute swan population of the River Thames in South East England have suffered as a result, and David Barber, the queen's swan marker, believes fewer cygnets will be born as a result.

He said: "Unfortunately more than 180 swans were found either dying or dead on the river between Reading and Windsor, with over 115 deaths being reported in the Windsor area alone.


What I'd be very interested to read is how they cope down there with disinfecting the area  -  and will they vaccinate any survivors?