I took lots of photos today!

Changing the feeding routine has been successful in losing most of the thieving pheasants and saving loads of duck food and money!  I always set out 5 breakfast bowls before I let the 3 groups out of their huts, containing a couple of handfuls of noodles or rice mixed with some vegetables or fruit and a small amount of wheat in water - I've not seen any pheasant dip their heads into these bowls yet.  All ducks and drakes gobble up this breakfast as fast as they can and then rush to the big pond where Captain, Anke and Candy are waiting for them - I always see to them first as they go in first at night, fair is fair!

I try and delay putting out the dry food in the three blue containers until 11 or later [on Wednesday it was not until half past 2, after luncheon club duty - they survived!], but just the last few days a few of the bolder ducks have come looking in through the sun lounge door when I've left it too late for their liking, as if to give me a reminder, and it always works.  All 27 dive into the grains, spilling many, and when they've rushed off again some very persistent pheasant ladies turn up out of nowhere and dive in themselves.  If we put the covers on the food containers they pick up all the spillings - I don't mind that, rather them then rats.  We've not got our feathered mob used to strict times yet, they like to feed little and often, but it's going fairly well.  After 3 pm I don't cover the food up any more so the ducks can fill up before the long nights, and all pheasants seem to disappear around half past 3.  So, the new system is working very well and we don't fatten up so many pheasants any more .................  that is to say, it works very well if we remember to put leftover food away into the garage after putting the ducks to bed, not as happened on Wednesday night when we both forgot, and Thursday early morning there were about a dozen of cock~ and hen pheasants and  other birds busily emptying the three food containers!

This morning it must have been 20 past 11 when a little posse of ducks appeared at the sun lounge door and others were getting into the frog pond looking for food.  I went out with the camera, did the feeding, cleaned all three huts, and when I went back to the house I'd taken 59 photos - I'll show you some of them now:

I know this is a cheat, they all came up from the frog pond in batches and I couldn't get them all into one shot.  This 'stitched' photo has a couple of advantages, we suddenly have 34 ducks and TWO cars!

Billie-Jean is leading this batch, and these 2 on the right are of Candy who doesn't get featured often.

When I went to clean the hut by the big pond the 27 were split into several groups, all very busy in various ways:

                                                              On the right, Dotty and Daisy, 2 of our 6 ducks from Seagrave.

I thought for some time that I really ought to give names to this year's ducks. The two dark ones have white markings on the right side of their necks, one is like a V lying on its side, so I thought of calling that one Vera - Ve, and r for right side .... I know it's silly, but it helps me remember.

On the other one the marking is just a white line, seen in big photo above just opening her wings - would Stripe or Dash be a good name for her?  The black and white drake in these pictures is the one whose beak I accidentally stabbed with my small garden fork - he's shown no after effects.

  

The small insert in the photo on the left shows the first/second duckling to hatch this year, and this is how she's grown up.  She's a big girl, like Jubilee [the other one of the first two to hatch], and I'm calling her Winona or Winnie for short which is supposed to mean "first born".  Here she is again, in front:

              I love this photo - the ducks and the reeds doing a V-formation pointing to Captain top right.

There was an alarm call - some big birds flying overhead or Lucy the cat approaching, I'm not sure - and most of them came out of the pond, giving me more photo opportunities.

Joseph and Georgie [drakes from last year] 

are looking resplendent again after their moult. 

I had been convinced that this brown drake [before his dark head developed] was a duck, one of 3 dark ones from this year.                                                        

                                               

This little trio are, from the back, Tuts, Dotty and Caramel.
                                                                                         

                 

                                                                                      
                  Gertie II standing pretty [Dotty behind]

Now you may think this is all looking very pretty, idyllic almost, but I am getting signs that I can't wait much longer before giving away 7 of the drakes, some of them are getting frisky already.  In the small photo it seems as if Georgie is falling asleep at the bucket, but in fact he was nodding vigorously in preparation for mounting Mocca - which he did where she was standing, and I could see that her neck was being pressed against the rim of the bucket.  Remembering that one of friend Heike's ducks had her neck broken during mating I chased the pair of them into the pond immediately!