Our weekend visitors and final name giving

We had a brief but lovely family visit this weekend, three wonderful photographers, and the youngest of them has saved 468 [four hundred and sixty eight!] of the photos they took on a stick for me.  They are all absolutely wonderful, and it will take me ages to keep looking and to decide which ones to put in here.


The giving of names has finished now, however, thanks to Annie's suggestions;  Eleanor has presented them like this:

Jay-Z was Annie's proposed name for the black drake, so of course there had to be a brown Beyoncé to go with him  -  we've renamed Sarah's favourite/Sporty/Praline yet again into Beyoncé for that reason.  We thought for ages about something green to call our green-beaked drake, 'greengage', 'grape', 'lettuce' or even 'Shrek' didn't seem quite right.  In the end I said that he didn't look all that green anyway, more multi-coloured.  "Of course", Annie shouted, "the technicolour dreamcoat!"  So Joseph it was.


With the others we left things as they were, but to please Charlie [whose great picture of Jay-Z caused huge admiration at an exhibition and was sold immediately], who has always wanted one of our ducks to be named 'Jemima', we have changed the J in HJ to mean Jemima and not Jedda.


I'll introduce them a little larger now, in their watery element:

Ben

 Ben and Jay-Z

 Hedda-Jemima and Billie-Jean

Tut[enkhamen]

 Bess front left

Beyoncé and Gertie centre back

Joseph and George

[hard to imagine now how small Georgie used to be:]

Eleanor took some great group shots, I'll put in 3 of them:

This would be the easiest to name, from left to right:
Bess, Joseph[note how he's still hanging on to a stick of cucumber], Billie-Jean, Jay-Z, Ben, Gertie, HJ, Beyoncé, Georgie, Tuts.


I just love this sunshiny picture ......



.... and Annie's favourite group picture was this one, I think:

Isn't it great the way 3 of them are standing up to perfection, Beyoncé, George especially, and Jay-Z.

My darling daughter Annie thought that my "ducky friends" might also like to see photos of me, and took several.
I'll oblige with two of them then:

This weekend was the first time for ages that Colin was able to stay with us, and his photos of our bottom 5 made them look great even in their moult: