Progress report on the rejected baby duckling

It is doing fine, the little one, but it is lonesome.   The two eggs I pinched from under Billie-Jean's bum last night [she nearly killed me!] and put into the incubator at Michael's suggestion have not shown any sign of life so far; it would be lovely if this little one got some company.

I try and entertain it - it hasn't made friends with Petra's Wichtel, but is has taken a shine to my slippers!  Early this afternoon I put down a flat container with water hoping it would have a little bath, it wouldn't have it, jumped out every time I sat it in the water.  It ran to my slippers, scrambled on top, started preening busily and lost its balance.  Fell to the floor, ran round my left leg and scrambled up to the top of the slipper again from behind.  Started preening, fell down, ran round, climbed up ........... etc etc.  Here are some photos:

What shall we call this one, Damian?

                                                       This is my favourite of today's photos.

While the two of us were watching the tennis on television we had some visitors at the door:

From left to right: moulting Joseph's beak, Bless having a preen, Jay-Z and nosy Coffecream.

 

I've just realized I never put Thursday's photos in here.  It was so wet and muddy within the metal enclosure that I rolled it up and put it to one side to offer the little ones some grass to run on.

The youngsters were finding it so easy to slip in and out of the pond and were so excited about being able to run around in the greater, former chicken run that I didn't put the metal fence back up again.  Only some of the area, over the food station, has bird protection netting on now.

From the house I could see that the little ones were coming right up against the gate to the duck shed:

From the other side it looked like this:

While a few were investigating their greater environment ....

.... others found the pond more interesting:

After all that excitement they got tired, some lay at the bottom of the ramp, some in the hut:

After a short time all of them were in the hut and auntie Gertie could go foraging without having the kids on her tail: