A little mallard lady ...

.... all on her own, has been around for the last few days. She seems to spend all day somewhere near, I can often see her flying off when I'm going to the big pond. We've seen males on their own many times, but not females - strange.

Early this morning, before I'd let the ducks out, I could hear loud quacking outside the house, and there she was:

You can tell by the puddle above that we've had a lot of rain recently, only since yesterday has the weather started to dry out.

I heard loud quacking yesterday afternoon as well, at the back of the house where the troops don't go so often now. I took some photos from the bathroom window:

Anke was there, too!

But what was that pale thing lying next to the trough with the strawberries, it looked like a duck, a pale one - Honey? Oh no, there was no movement to be seen, not even a flick of the wings. I kept looking out to see if there was any change in her position, nothing, I had feared that she would be the next one to die -
I rushed out to fetch John, he was making the rounds with the mower tractor, so there was no back-up coming from there. Very gingerly, I went round the back of the house, afraid to look really .......................... and the "corpse" stood up and ran away to join the others:

Even though most of their days are spent in and around the largest pond, our ducks and drakes still come to the front garden - as you've seen in the photos above - and spend some time at the frog pond, usually in the afternoons:

Dotty continues to look content with her lot, but she does shout loudly now when the others have deserted her for too long. Her left leg still sort of slips out sideways quite often, but she manages to pull it in and stand well on both legs.

I took the camera out this lunchtime and took photos of the ducks at the big pond and many things in the garden flowering this late in the year.

The blue Salvia on the very right is one of the plants John bought with birthday money; same as the orange dahlia in the middle picture it's flowering for the second time this year.

This bed in front on the left I cleared and planted up recently, and I'm delighted that two of the dahlias in it are flowering now.

Some of the plants/bulbs I dug out when clearing the front garden and re-planted elsewhere are also flowering now, like the autumn crocuses and a couple of roses: