Duckling Antics and Memories

We now have some new ducklings in the pen at the end of the garden - some of them have been incubated and some are natural but 'rescued' to save them from the beastly crows that keep raiding our eggs and stealing our babies.  It is lovely to hear them chirping away in the the small arc.

Yesterday they gave us all a fright though,  they managed to escape their arc and the pen and got out on the pond.  They are pretty quick swimmers when this size and with 14 of them all racing around the pond it took quite a while to get them back in again - much wading in the pond and using a large net.  What they forget is that they don't float very well at this age as they don't have the benefit of the wax like secretions that a mum would normally give them.  When they were all eventually rescued and returned to their pen they needed a lot of drying off and most of them looked very sorry for themselves.  Happily they are back to normal now none the worse for their adventure - and thankfully none took a trip with the crows!

We have some other new ducks arrived into the garden as well this week (and they may have been responsible for letting the little ones out!!) 4 new girls who are about 18 months old have come to join us from a home where they were dearly loved but could not look after them any more.  There are two magpie ducks among these.  They will have a few days in the pen before coming out to meet the rest of us - we are looking forwards to meeting them.

Last weekend we saw the first leaves put on the Memory Tree in the garden and they look so pretty. The whole family came to pay their respects to their grandmother/mother.  What a nice family - they even thought to feed us too, we hope to see them again.

the leaves are engraved with the 'memory'

The Memory Tree with the first glass leaves installed

Taking an occasional stroll around the car park is a bit frowned upon by the staff as they worry that we will get run over - however we often do it at this time of year (when we are trying to find our own private space for woo-ing (isn't this what owls do to?)).  Before I got shoo-ed back in to the gardens I spotted this lovely car - just wanted to share it with you.