Dotty, and more gardening with ducks

The eight weeks' waiting were up and Dotty was taken to the vet's yesterday to have her last piece of metal taken out of her thigh bone.  I could see that vet Brian was disappointed, the piece of metal had worked itself loose and there were also a few fragments of bone - it had not been a clean fracture.  But on the positive side he said how lively Dotty was and in what good condition, he didn't think she would benefit from any further operation [which is exactly what I was thinking, she'd been through more than enough].  "Let her be", he said, "let her do what she wants to", and that's exactly what we'll do.  Even with her limp and holding her left leg out sideways she seems content in her daily routine, she eats well, preens herself, swims when she wants to and chooses a resting place next to the fence from where she can watch the others going by.  Every night she goes into her hut by herself and gets the company of between 3 and 5 other girls, last night even 6 went in with her.

I took a few photos of her today:

 
It looks as if she's got some grass in her beak - must have been eating when I disturbed her with the camera.

 

Dotty is as feisty as ever, she hissed at us vigorously when we put her into her travelling box and when we fetched her out again, brave little duck!


I chose the area around the fallen ash for my next clean-up operation in the garden:

 

After almost three days I'm still not finished, but with constant duck company I was able to make quite a few observations.

               Winnie left, Vera right

Dash still comes the closest of the three ducks who barely leave my side when I'm weeding, I could easily grab her beak as I'm turning over lumps of earth or bashing some heavy clay, she doesn't even mind if I knock her beak accidentally, so intent is she on the "delights" I uncover.  Her two sidekicks Vera and Winnie are a little more skittish and jump out of the way if I make a sudden move.   It was interesting to see that there is just one thing that makes Dash leave her place next to my fork - no, not the drakes chasing, but alarm calls from the crows in the field next to ours.  It seems that birds do have a common language, at the sound of ALARM all our ducks and drakes rushed off to the presumed safety of the big pond.

Just in the last couple of days Anke has joined in this waiting-for-worms-to-be-uncovered.  She's got rather bold and I've seen her attack my three little helpers and try and drive them away.  Usually she potters around at a little distance from me, making sweet little meep meep meep sounds belying her size.  Those sweet sounds change to raucous shouting when one of the black drakes is trying to get her, and out of nowhere comes running up Captain, her knight in shining armour, and chases the naughty boys away.  He is bigger than either of them, and size means a lot in the animal kingdom.  What he's up to when he's out of sight I can't say ....

                Anke in front of the black bowl, her dark feathers are coming through again now.





 
Heavy rain is forecast for tomorrow, that should water in all my transplants and the bulbs I put in again.

My "three little helpers" on their way to the big pond after I picked up my tools to go in the house.

The twins Dash and Vera standing between two "wild" patches in the garden.

At the big pond the boys were showing off, "look how big I am",
that sort of thing.  I caught Tuts on camera just as he was rising
out of the water.

 

                          There's still plenty of colour in the garden, this shot taken from near the garage.