A tale of two ducks II

An old friend who is one of my blog readers (possibly the only one, who knows?) has been asking what has happened with the ducks. If this means nothing to you then scroll down a few entries to the offering of March 27.

The ducks arrived on my garden pond last month, and were either the same pair who took up residence last year or had come on quack of bill recommendation. They waddled about, ate and fertilised the lawn, preened, bobbed up and down on the pond, ate some birdfood, provided some interesting viewing for our cat Missy, and seemed remarkably happy for a couple of days. Love's sweet bloom personified.

Last year the drake seemed to take an unhealthy interest in frogs, eating at least one, while his mate seemed rather partial to tadpoles. Now tadpoles are your ultimate eco-warrior. They will devour anything organic in a pond, dead leaves, plants, dead fish, algae all vanish down their voracious gullets - they also eat their brothers and sisters, which if nothing else explains why we do not have Biblical plagues of frogs every year, and, in survival of the biggest in this case, they provide fresh protein for fish coming out of their winter stupor. Some must even survive to become adults frog, toads and newts. So to protect them and their parents and the fish - which ducks will also eat given the chance - I decided to provide my mallards with genuine duck food.

You would not believe how much the Internet says they eat in a day, getting on for a pound between them, so I duly purchased a sack of the finest duck victuals from my local farming and equestrian supplies emporium and stocked the pond mini-bar.

The ducks, whose idea of fear was to paddle furiously to the opposite side of the pond as you went past and then glare at you, watched with interest, quacking quietly to each other, as I washed out a container for clean water then cleaned a large plantpot saucer as a feed tray and dutifully filled both and placed them by the pond - I didn't want the little dears to have to waddle too far. To encourage them to investigate I even scattered a couple of slices of bread, fresh wholemeal riddled with healthy seed of course, around the containers.

The ducks duly waddled out of the pond, ate the bread, dipping it in the drinking water first - could be a design problem there - then looked and pecked at the food. An hour later they were cleared for take off on their daily flight, scattered the local wildlife with their sonic quacks as they took to the air and have not been seen since. The next lot are on grass and pondwater.