It's getting more Spring-like

We did have frost this morning.  Because the hoses were frozen I carried just enough water in buckets to serve my feathered friends breakfast, leaving the water changes until much later when the sun had thawed out the water hoses.  I've been going out with the camera several times recently in the hope of catching Dotty making big splashings in her little pond as John had seen her do, ducking and diving, he said, and making lots of noise with it.  He'd also seen GertieII in there with Dotty, and I did get a few photos of the two together if not of Dotty's splashy bathing:

 
Dotty gives me the impression that she's quite content with things as they are, especially on a nice, sunny day [last Sunday, a horridly wet and miserable day, she kept slipping on the wet ramp trying to get into the hut - maybe chicken wire will cure that ...].  She hops rather than limps, but on the photo above right as she's just jumped out of the pond you can see that she can put full weight on her formerly broken left leg.

GertieII doesn't stop in with Dotty all the time, she hot-foots it down to the others when I turn up with the camera:

Having run out of Dotty's enclosure GertieII stands still for a moment [cut-out top right] checking up where the rest of the mob are, and then runs to join them through the orchard:
                                                  

New partnerships have been formed in our duck world, saw Captain mating with Billie-Jean one evening while Anke was keeping out of the way.  Billie absolutely refused to go into their hut, though.
And our little limping Mocca keeps making eyes at Tuts, but he prefers Caramel who is just running up in this picture:

We have some spectacular mole hills in the garden, everywhere it seems, and I keep finding more patches of lovely crocuses and other heralds of Spring:

 

To finish for today, showing that John is making great progress mending our storm-broken fence:

 

PS on Wednesday morning:

Dotty delighted me yesterday afternoon, she came out of her little pond and walked carefully by me while I was busy cleaning her hut.  That was the very first time she came that close, previously she'd always waited until I had gone.
She had a good feed out of the box, did a little more digging in a muddy hole she'd made, and then went right into the far corner of the enclosure where there is still a good growth of grass - you can't see it in the photo below, it's out of shot a little further bottom left.

I'm sure the slightly warmer temperatures recently and the lack of really heavy rain have helped her a lot.