Last call.....

The Indian Summer has been responsible for a number of unusual phenomena this autumn - amazingly red apples in the orchard, the best harvest of damsons in years, beautiful leaf shades in the woods and hedgerows, grass still growing in October, the driest September/October combined...... Here at RectoryReserve we have had a few strange occurrences of our own - extremely late hatching swallows and a litter of 10 Mangalitza piglets (unheard of) to name but two.
But to cap it all, one of the call ducks decided she had enough time to hatch another brood and duly 'popped' this little group of 7 on Sunday 25th October! Had she done that last year at the same time they would surely have frozen to death. She must have known well in advance that it would be OK (laying an egg a day for at least 14 days and then 28 more to sit on them!) - clever thing. Having had only two ducklings survive from the earlier broods in the year I was determined to try and save more of this hatching. Luckily, it being Pigs-to-the-Big-Butcher day that Sunday, I was up and out early and so spotted them first thing before mum could march them all out to the pond behind my back! (Which is what they usually do and then half of them fall over on their backs and get squashed en route).
I quickly scooped the little ones up and put them in a box and then waited for the mother to make a lot of noise so that I could identify which one was the mother.... which she certainly did. So I managed to scoop her up and put her in a box too. Then moved them all to the broody coop.
At which point the mother duck decided "enough" and waddled at a rate of knots into the nest box end, totally disowning her brood. Ducks really can be such bad mothers! So I shooed her out. She waddled back. I shooed her out again. She waddled back again. So I shooed her out and blocked the hatchway. That got her. She spent about another half hour pretending the little ones were nothing to do with her. But then she did a complete volte face ...... next thing I knew she was huddling them all under her and covering them with her wings. Where they stayed for the rest of the day. By the time it got to evening and I opened up the hatch to the nest box, she was in there with them in no time and for the next week disappeared back in there with them everytime I appeared on the horizon!
But now, 10 days later, they are well grown and strong enough to be out and about in the nursery pen.... she still hides them as soon as she sees me but it takes her a little longer each time so I hope to have a photo of the 'growing up' ducklings in a day or two.
Meanwhile I am just relieved that there are still 7 of them........