Duck Tales From a Small Corner of Warwickshire (2)

 So……… the same pair of mallards have been coming into our garden since the spring of 2006.

Hang on, how do you know it’s the same pair? I hear you cry.

All ducks look alike, don’t they? The males are brightly coloured and the females are a dull brown.

Well, no, each has its own distinct and unique markings and colouring. I must admit you do need to get fairly close to distinguish who is who. Bearing this in mind and not having the best eyesight, from the first time I began feeding the pair regularly I decided that I would make a rather peculiar clucking sound every time I fed them (a noise they and only they would associate with FOOD) clever huh!

Within a very short time they were soon waddling up the garden as fast as they could every time they heard me call. In those early far off days we only fed them bread. (Very bad I now know. Angie likened it to being fed ‘Junk’ food all the time).

However, it could not have done them any harm as one day during early summer their pattern of coming into the garden suddenly changed. Instead of them both coming into the garden together, they began coming separately, the female one day the male the next. Thinking they had had a ‘tiff’ I thought no more about it.  Over the course of about the next three / four weeks the males visits became less and less and eventually stopped. The female came about every 2 days ravenously hungry, devouring everything we put down.

Still I did not twig! Then nothing, what had I done wrong?

 Then one day, a short while later while Angie and I were down at the bottom pond (our largest) checking on the fish (as the heron was very active at this time, to put it mildly) through the fence came the female duck followed by six tiny ducklings.

We were delighted. It must have taken them ages to waddle across the field from the brook and would have been quite dangerous as it is very exposed. They only came that once, staying for a short while.

 It seemed to me that apart from showing off her young, as we all do! She was saying ‘Thanks for feeding me over the past few months this is what you have helped to produce’.

I decided that should the pair return the next spring I would find out more about ducks and get some proper duck food! Then who knows what could happen.....L.A