One thing about living on a Marina, you get to see the goings on of wildlife close up.
The rabbit population is now fit and well, the swallows have left, crows, gulls, magpies and pigeons are plentiful, I can hear if not see robins singing on our morning walks, and at night, owls are contentedly hooting in the distance.
The night sky is not as black or diamond studded as it was in Lincolnshire, but this is due to the artificial light from the town and local properties distorting the natural darkness. I can still see the Big Dipper, North Star and Cassiopeia on a clear night, which tells me that it is going to be COLD.
A little while ago, I confessed to not knowing much about ducks and looked them up.
It would appear that the ducks here haven’t read the same manual as they are about four months ahead of the experts. Either that or they are practising for the main event early next year.
Laughing Duck, Rooster Duck and their chums have been pretty quiet over the last few days.
We put it down to a change in the weather and cooler temperatures. However, the Egyptian ducks are back and geese are still flying over us in huge numbers.
The herons however have disappeared, and although the adult swans are still here, we haven’t seen their three cygnets for a while.
The male mallards are in abundance now, and the group of 17 ducks on the water in front of us two days ago had a ratio of 2 to 1.
This morning as I made breakfast, I noticed a male and female ‘dipping’ their heads in the water as they swam in front of our window, and thought that the female had been in a fight as she had very few head feathers.
The male then promptly climbed on her back, holding her head under the water by a couple of the feathers she had left as he ‘did the business’. After a few seconds, he got off and swam away.
The female then had a full submergence, raised herself on her tail as she spread her wings, then relaxed and swam off after him (picture is of a male here doing the same thing). Funnily enough, her head feathers were just fine and there were plenty of them.
Obviously time will tell, and we are looking forward to seeing ducklings.
Until then though, we have the winter months to get through and will be feathering our own nest in preparation.
pensitivity101 