We did get snow!

It started sooner than forecast, before 3 in the afternoon yesterday.  Our 10 new drakes and ducks volunteered to go to bed early, around half past 4, all by themselves as they often do when they think it's time.

It was just a thin covering at first, but this morning  there were more than 10 cm of snow.  I took photos of 2 views - yesterday and early this morning for comparison:

 


The photos on the left hand side were taken a short time before the snow flurries had died down a bit and the ducks went to bed.  This morning we had to do do some snow clearing before releasing the duckies out of their huts.

Because I'd noticed a lot of bullying by the new drakes towards the ducks at the big pond I thought I could use the snow to my advantage and keep the 6 bullies up by the house by fencing the area off.  The ice on the ponds was very soft this morning and breaking it up was easy, so I thought the 5 residents at the big pond would have a pleasant day without being pushed out of their pond and being pecked at by the new mob, and the 10 could splash in their little pond .......

No, it didn't go like that.  For just a little while our big 2011 ducklings tried to make sense of the new white world:

 I think GertieII has a cracking good stance in this picture, fourth from the right.

Instead of going into the little pond as I intended they spent their time going in and out of the hut and to the food containers.  I did film the mob coming out of the shed, but the video still hasn't been uploaded to YouTube - it failed 4 times.  The message said there was no internet connection, but all 5 lights on the router were on.  I blame the weather!

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It's finished, finally, 21.30 hrs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7eKyUMb9n4

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I hadn't long started dinner [roast chicken] when John shouted that he'd seen the 10 running past the garage, they'd found a loophole.  I went out a little later to see where they'd slipped through, under the chairs it was:

I could follow their tracks quite easily, past the bird bath and the garage, then they veered off from my foot steps to the shortest route to the big pond:

It looked quite peaceful when I arrived at the pond .....

Hedda [behind] and her son Big H.

But then I could see that the bullying [from Tuts, mostly] was going on as I've seen often recently and decided to drive the 10 back to their enclosure and fence it more securely.  Candida and Anke came along at first, but turned back home when we were half way.

I didn't take any more photos after this one, but tried to drive the 10 into their little pond.  Admittedly, there were ice floes in it - but so there had been in the big pond where they'd been splashing and diving very happily.  I managed to shoo them in once, and they popped straight out again.  So I left them to it and did a quick clean-up in their shed because they'd been in and out of it so often this morning.  I got a shock, there were fresh blood spatters all over the bedding.  I cleaned up and topped up as best I could and went to inspect the 10 for injuries;  there were none I could see, nor were there any traces of blood anywhere in the enclosure after I'd brought them back.  I can only assume that one of them, trying to find a way out, hurt themselves on something sharp, but that the injury healed up quickly before they went on their way to the big pond.

Captain and his four girls had a quiet afternoon, and the youngsters carried on marching to food and water and in and out of their shed - but not into their little pond!