Today's the day we had been looking forward to celebrating auntie Nora's [John's godparent] hundreth birthday, what a shame she died 6 weeks before.
It's been a whole week since I put an entry into my blogs, and so as to avoid withdrawal symptoms I took a few photographs out of the upstairs window yesterday late afternoon during a rain break [funny that, ever since droughts in rivers and reservoirs everywhere had been announced in the news we've had nearly non-stop rain].
Our group of 10 were just on their way from the frog pond to the orchard. The arrow on this picture points to some of the thickets in that area where our 5 drakes hid out in terror after my attempts at separating them from the four girls and 1 boy.
I must say at this point that leaving all 10 together again has gone a lot better than I expected. Now and again, when some of the drakes are carrying on too violently on top of one of the girls [usually Beyoné/Praline], I run out screaming at them and chase them off to give the duck a chance to escape. All four of them have marks along their necks where the boys got hold of them, but their necks are not bare of feathers and certainly no blood has been drawn. It would really make my life easy if I could get the whole group of 10 through the summer as one, most of the time there's peace within the group as there is within the 5 at the big pond.
Having just written that it's usually peaceful between the 6 drakes and 4 ducks I must relate that at least 3 of the 6 manage to expend a lot of excess energy by running off and trying to get hold of one of Captain's girls. Yesterday I was able to witness one of these raids, what a shame I didn't have the camera on me.
I was cutting a lot of rhubarb after dinner, the patch is not far from the big pond. The group of 10 had joined me and were lying nearby - they do like a bit of company. All of a sudden black Jay-Z got up, and casting a sideways glance at me [in case I tried to stop him, I presume] he ran to this little separating fence that Anke had trampled such a path next to by trying to find her way back into the pond:
Jay-Z had no such problems. With one beat of his wings he skipped over the fence and rushed through the pond in pursuit of the four girls who'd run off screaming into the field. He got hold of and raped Anke and was then chased off by Captain. It didn't bother him, he seemed well used to this kind of ritual. Back in the pond he had a leisurely wash and brush up, dived and splashed a bit, then jumped out and stood at the little fence again. Flapped his wings once, leapt over, and calmly rejoined his group. I wonder how often in a day he does that?
Anke and Lane, since they've taken to digging through a mossy patch way out in the 'horse' field, manage to find their way back into the enclosure now without running up and down this little separating fence. But I often see the black or the white drake or Tuts running all the way out there to try their luck with Anke and Lane. I don't mind as it gives a bit of relief to the 4 young ducks in their group.
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