Ducks and drakes in moult

I did it again, lost everything I'd written around these photos in an hour and a half this morning.  I'll try again.

Our 10 youngsters have gone extremely shy on us.  They no longer come running up to us in expectation of goodies when they catch sight of us but run in the opposite direction if you so much as take a step towards them.  As friend Alison wrote in facebook when she saw recent pictures "Awwr, they's all growed up!"

That was exactly my thought this morning, when I saw HJ grabbing hold of Bless and doing what I hadn't expected to happen until Spring - who would have thought it of our sweet little mini-Hedda, the one I believed to be our first quacking girl:

The moult doesn't help, of course, it makes them feel somewhat exposed [after all, we don't see much of our garden birds in late summer because of their moult], and the fact that we removed their little enclosure fence has added to that.  Without it they huddle very close together and run away as soon as they've finished breakfast.

That red saucepan you can see in the photo above next to the ramp to the shed, I always filled it with mixed grain so they could have 'adult' food along with their sloppy breakfast in the white bowl [they still tuck in with enthusiasm into any overgrown cucumbers and courgettes that we give them, as well as tomatoes, bananas, cottage cheese .....].
Just recently they've been in such a hurry to get down to the big pond and returned only in time for bed that those grains have hardly been touched.  The 10 have been eating the 5's food and also finished off their layers' pellets - we had our last egg, from Hedda, on 1st September.

So yesterday, after our luncheon club duty, I took that saucepan with grains down to the big pond and settled down with my camera.  Some came out of the water and made a token effort pecking at the grains, but then it was back to their normal pursuits of preening, making mud puddles, bickering with neighbours or simply snoozing.

Our Joseph with his technicolour coat appears to be the most aggressive among the drakes.  I watched him attack any number of those that happened to be standing, swimming or preening next to him without provocation and peck them away.  This could be interesting in Spring!  Who would have thought that our lovely 'green goddess' would develop into this? 

Looking at the tiny dark feathers growing around young Joseph's beak and eyes I wouldn't be surprises if he got a black head after the moult.




Now a picture to catch up.  Annie told me her favourite photo from their visit was one where all 10's beaks were pointing in the same direction, as if watching a tennis match, and she found it and posted it to me:

I tried very hard to mirror this picture, and I did in Word and saved it.  But as soon as I put it in here the mirror effect was not reproduced.  It was easier when I painted the Wimbledon left and right effect, years ago, of our first four - can't find that picture, either!