Latest ducklings

Not in their earliest fluffiness but these eight ducklings are at the 'diving' stage which is very comical. They seem to set each other off as one by one they dive underwater and then bob up again a few seconds later. They seem to be spending time on the moat unlike earlier broods who mainly moved off elsewhere.

And now it's mallard central too...

Just the day after reporting that we seemed to have stacks of moorhens for the first time in a while, today it was mallards overrunning the place. As I have reported previously we had some broods of ducklings earlier in the year that didn't stay around. Their mothers took them off - probably because there wasn't much water in the moat. However today two sets of ducklings (almost fully grown) returned with mother so we had around 25 mallards from those two groups. In addition we have the duck plus one duckling born around a week ago and tonight I spotted a group of about eight newly hatched ducklings. That makes getting on for forty mallards on the moat and probably takes us over 50 for ducklings hatched this year. One more brood and 2012 could be a record year. The picture is of one group of 'ducklings' sleeping on the lawn.