After carefully locking away my ducks and chickens last night, having apparently lost my white duck, you can imagine my surprise when I came out into the garden this morning and found - you guessed it - my White Duck disporting herself joyously on the pond!
I decided I had better keep an eye on her to find out where the nest was that she had obviously been secretly sitting on for the past few days. After a hearty breakfast and an extensive toilette, (her not me) I followed her round the garden at a discreet distance wearing a brown overcoat and spying through a newspaper with a hole in it, and in the best detective tradition she gave me the slip when I nipped into the kitchen to get a quick coffee.
Here she is taking a short cut through the sweet corn...
However, I knew the general direction she was headed and was able to head her off at the pass and discover her and her ten (yes ten!) eggs in the michaelmas daisies in the vegetable garden. So I had probably been walking past her nest for the last week and not seen her. I always seem to have a patch of michaelmas daisies in a corner, well they just get away when I'm to busy really, and they are in any case a good late nectar source for the bees.
I left her there for the rest of the day and after dark moved her into a spare small duck house and she seems to be happy sitting on the eggs. Of course, I have no drake so her eggs won't hatch, and I'm considering getting some fertile eggs for her to sit on. Ducks don't usually make very good mothers so I was surprised that she's sitting so well. Although I remove chickens who try to sit in the nest boxes, I hadn't the heart to take the duck away from her nest since she's gone to such a lot of trouble, it seemed a bit mean, but do I really want any more ducklings, do I have the room that's the question?
No comments:
Post a Comment