Dolly's Dozen

The RectoryReserve wildlife seems totally undeterred by all the rain we are having this summer. In fact, if the ducks are anything to go by, it would appear to be having a very positive effect. Dolly displayed her brood for the first time yesterday - and what a brood! In the 5 years since we started keeping ducks, this is the largest clutch to have hatched. Clever Dolly. All the more so because she built her nest on the fourth bale level amongst the hay in the barn. Not only did she have to keep going up and down herself for the 4 weeks of incubation (ducklings take a week longer than chicks to hatch) but the 12 ducklings had to negotiate their way down from the hay in order to follow her to the pond. That's about 100yds away using the circuitous route they had to follow to get out of the barn after the horses had been turned out in their field for the day. No mean feat considering they were probably only two or three days old at the time and had never been out of the nest. In fact, the first we knew of them was when I went into the Poultry Palace to collect the chicken eggs yesterday morning and saw what I thought was a very fat duck - or maybe even two - sitting in the midst of the straw. As I opened the door to go in, Dolly rose up in stately fashion displaying a mass of tiny heads and bodies hidden beneath her. I couldn't understand where they had suddenly appeared from since I'd seen and heard nothing in the haybarn the previous day! I thought it must have been a broody duck I'd inadvertantly missed seeing in the Poultry Palace. It was only when I went to check her nest in the hay that it dawned on me exactly what Dolly had achieved.

We now have to keep our fingers crossed and hope as many as possible survive. Ducklings have a very high mortality rate, which I don't really understand, but I think has something to do with the fact that in the first week or two they are quite unstable and if they fall over on their backs they don't have enough strength in their wings to 'flip' themselves over again. It's very sad. But I suppose it's nature's way of making sure the strongest survive.