1st of the month again, the year is going by too quickly ....

It's the walk with Moira today, at Beacon Hill, too, one of my favourite places.  John recovered enough from being unwell to go, but I've stopped behind - too much to catch up on like the proof-reading of our Heritage book.

I mentioned the surprising gentlemanly behaviour of our hooligan drake Tuts before, and he seems to be continuing in this fashion looking after Dotty - I took a little series of shots on Sunday and put it into Facebook with the title "It must be love"!

 

                                              

I've only seen Tuts once "taking his payment" for the protection given, like in the photo top right.  Nearly always he's standing near Dotty or walking slowly behind her. Very often with them are Winnie and Daisy, Tuts seems to regard them as HIS, and fiercely attacks other drakes coming near them and quite viciously driving away other girls like the twins and especially Gertie II who seems to suffer the most aggro.

 

 



They were there again yesterday [Dotty seems to take a day or two off after each excursion out of her enclosure to recover], you can see in the first little photo how she holds her badly healed leg out to the left:

 

 

Yesterday afternoon I was cleaning out Dotty's hut when I could see her trying to get back into the enclosure from the greenhouses end.  Tuts must have had enough of his escorting her, I'd seen him with the others on the big pond.  The little hole I'd cut into the fence for Dotty to slip in and out - because I thought she would be unable to manage the steep access through the gate - is still blocked because there had been too much through traffic from drakes and pheasants.  I went to open the gate [disturbing poor persecuted Gertie who was having a snooze all on her own], and lo and behold, Dotty managed very quickly to come through, get onto the pond and from there to the food - shortcut!