I'm back!

Both John and I are struggling to get rid of our colds, but we're managing alright, today I even spent some hours in the garden and I took some photos again!

We've been trying out a different duck feeding system, it was getting ridiculous how very many pheasants we were also feeding by leaving the dry food out for them all day in three containers near the three huts.  We have two pheasant rearing farms in the vicinity and pheasants are very clever in finding out where food is to be had - our ducks are not at all clever in chasing them off.

For a week we've been experimenting, only putting increased rations of the "wet" food out on morning release and the grains in just two containers - none by the big pond where the pheasants have been most plentiful - from about 10 - 11 in the morning and putting the lids back on the containers when the duck crowd had finished.  Trouble is they're such messy eaters, spilling a lot, and some pheasants were still taking advantage, still do - they're very patiently hiding in the undergrowth until they see their chance.  But in spite of continued pheasant opportunism we saved more than a third on the food we used to put out with this new system.

We were hoping to reduce feeding times to just twice a day, and today I tried that for the first time, at 11 am and 3 pm, and I took a bunch of pictures of both feeding times - some of them I think are lovely:

 

 

 

 So that was the 11 am feed, in the afternoon we had a little bit of sunshine:

 

Oh, if anybody is interested in what that insect in our bathroom was, my friend Lexx from the German duck forum gave me the info, it's a Pimpla Instigator, no less!

The black slip wasp (Pimpla instigator) belongs to the family ichneumon wasps (Ichneumonidae), in the order Hymenoptera, the suborder Apocrita and the superfamily Ichneumonoidea. They are widespread and commonly encountered in Europe and North Africa. The black slip wasp reaches body lengths of 10-24 mm. The body is black, sometimes with red legs. The sting of the female is about half the length of the abdomen.
The fertilized females search for the pupae of butterflies to lay their eggs in. They bite the butterfly pupa and lay an unfertilised egg inside it. From this egg a male develops. If the females find a large pupa, they insert a fertilized egg in the same manner, from which a female develops. The hatched larvae initially feed on the blood of the butterfly pupae. 
Later, they eat the whole insides of the pupae. After that the black slip wasp larvae pupate. 2 weeks later the young black slip wasps hatch and bite through the skin of the butterfly pupae. The adult black slip wasp overwinters, often behind tree bark.