The first pond has been cleaned

I tackled the first, the smallest pond on Saturday morning.  After initial difficulties - the blue hose kept leaking or splitting at the joins, had to cut a piece off that had perished over winter - I was absolutely filthy by 1 pm when I could let the clean water run in again.  Our mob of 16 from the two top huts avoided my activities at the pond, but were magically drawn to the spot near the horse fence where the dirty water was running out of the hose, dirty, dirty ducks!
Some pics:














The area near the horse fence can be seen by Captain from below, and quite often recently I've noticed him mounting his own pirate raids on the 13 girls from the top.  It has had the effect of keeping the 2 top groups largely out of Captains domain [even without fencing it off] and it has made Candi's life a little easier, too.
Anke is still hell-bent on getting out into the field, every time I look, it seems, she's in there, with Captain standing guard nearby.  When I turn up she runs around the outside of the fenced area and gets back to the big pond that way, where she usually dives into the food supplied as if famished:

The little pond is now clean - momentarily - I'll have to tackle the other two pronto.  Honey stayed behind in this one yesterday morning even after the 15 others had disappeared.  Eventually she came running out in search of them but went to the back of the house by mistake where they weren't.  By the time I'd found the camera she was back in front of the house, calling, and Jay-Z came to escort her to the others behind the garage.  If duck calls, drake comes running!

The duckies' favourite puddle in front of the garage has re-emerged after the recent rains, in the picture below Daisy is standing in front of it:

Yesterday morning I could see from the window that there was a duck settling herself under the climbing hydrangea in front of the garage.  She was picking greenery from all around her as if she was building a nest.  At first I thought it looked like Winnie, but on examining the photos I realized it was Caramel.  Yes, we did find a white egg there later!