Big pond cleaning .....

... happened on Monday, 15th April, and as it is Thursday early morning now you can maybe guess that I needed 3 days to recover!  The pump performed very well, what made it so difficult was the amount of leaves and twigs gathered at the bottom clogging it up, and once a stone had been sucked into the "knie" attachment of the pump and I had to dismantle it.

 



You can see how green the water was, high time for a clean!  At first the three residents stayed on the pond but got off as the water level dropped.  Then they found where the dirty water was being emptied in the ditch:

They came out looking guilty when they'd been discovered and then needed a rest after their exertions - it didn't stop them though from making their way to the new nature pond several times during the afternoon and I had to fetch them back each time.  

 

The other exercise I got - apart from shovelling the dirt out of the pond by endless buckets-full - was chasing back the three drakes from the top many, many times, from their searches for Anke and Candi.

The leaves and twigs and black, horrible, stinky dirt I fetched out I emptied at the edge of the ditch on two compost heaps - it'll be good to use in two years' time, I reckon!

I didn't manage to get every last bit of dirt out of the bottom of the pond, and at 20 to seven I started filling the pond again letting the water run full on all night.  The next morning the water level hadn't reached the breakfast bowl, and only Anke of the three was brave enough to go in.  During the day Candi and Anke spent nearly all their time in the field behind their hut with Captain being on guard against marauders on this side of the fence ......

 

... and at quarter past three, when this photo was taken, the pond still wasn't full again - I turned the water off at half past 4.

Because Candi had followed Anke out into the field on Tuesday morning and had spent all day there too stupid or too frightened of pirate drakes to find her way in again I decided to adjust the fencing early yesterday morning taking in the bushes for cover behind the hut and also fencing off a section below the "formal garden" in the hope of stopping Candi from being molested.  It worked well yesterday, all seemed peaceful around the big pond.

The three hormonal drakes at the top concentrated on flattening available ducks there, Billie-Jean looked to be having a bad time of it.  Also noticed that Mocca's very slight limp is more severe now and Honey seemed worse again.  It could well be that the 3 boys' "attentions" are to blame.  Yesterday afternoon, though, I saw that Honey's preference for the frog pond could not just have to do with saving her legs - she had caught a big frog and was looking very cheerful and bright-eyed about it: