Ducks

Our Mallards have arrived this morning. We have a pair arrive each Spring to our natural pond. Sometimes they nest, but they are terrible parents and usually lose the ducklings into the stream before they can swim back up it.

 

Hi Punkdoc, fancy meeting you here! Very grateful to the members of Gardeners Corner for making it possible.
We have a shifting population of mallard here, attracted to our big pond, but some are residents. Kevin and Deirdre claim the terrace as their own and defend it vigorously, especially as the bird feeders are there.
So I knew who was the mother of the eggs laid at the back of the shrubs by the drystone wall, as she has nested there before. She is now up to 6 eggs and will lay at least as many more and unusually for a duck she is quite a good mother and manages to raise some ducklings each year.
Less experienced ducks lead their tiny ducklings on long treks through the tall grass and lose them along the way as they become exhausted, and the local corvids are only too ready to snatch up an easy meal. We often end up rescuing a few and becoming duck parents ourselves!

 

we are also visited each Spring. I thought they never nested with us but last year observed a line of 8 or 9 ducklings being marched across the lawn. I don't know where the nest was, the moorhen don't make the Mallards welcome at all.
I must find a picture to go in that hole on the left there, it looks bad with nothing

 

Hello @Punkdoc

I grew up in a very old farmhouse with a moat around three sides and a large pond in front of it, in the spring the activities of the mallards negated any discussions about birds and bees for us.

If all mallard ducklings which hatched then made it to adulthood we’d all be waist deep in mallards … most of them are Nature’s Bounty for other creatures with hungry youngsters to feed.

 

We get a lot of visitors to our pond: Mandarin ducks are regulars, used to have nesting Moorhens, and one very cold winter had a Water Rail.

 

We have a couple in the burn along the road which have been quite visible recently. Lots of water sources around for them, so I don't always see them.
The burn runs through nearby farmland and the little NT garden there, although there was a pair having a tootle around on the roof of a neighbouring garage one year after some heavy rain!

 

We don't have ducks in our pond but we do have terrible problems with duckweed. Any suggestions on how to curtail it? Many thanks.

 

We found that pond snails ate a lot of our duckweed.

 

In our last garden we had a large, natural pond dug for drainage and visiting birds brought in duckweed. OH used to sieve it off with an old plastic sieve but then bullrushed arrived and yallow flag so it became too difficult.

We've inherited a huge pond here - dug for cattle - and we just leave the duckweed as it provides cover for all the amphibians when herons and egrets visit.

 

Interesting about the pond snails @Dovefromabove we haven't seen any for years. Don't know why.

 

I bought some online … can’t remember where from but it was somewhere that seemed reputable ‘cos I was worried about importing disease.

 

I followed you to that snail selling place @Dovefromabove a couple of years ago and we purchased two lots from them for the garden pond but neither lot survived, think it may have been the fish bashing them against the underwater rocks during the mating excitement episodes??
Not sure that I have ever seen snails in our large very wildlife pond but we do regularly have a couple of Mallards arrive each Spring who, mostly, manage to raise around 8 to 10 ducklings each year. A pair of Mandarins called in one year but did not stop over and have not appeared again which is a shame as they are such attractive birds.
We do have a regular Heron visiting, but he/she seems to disappear around December and return again towards the end of March - where does a Heron spend its winter?

 

Hérons are still in the UK in the winter … just mooching around the reedbeds, marshes and riverbanks … but they start nesting early so they’ll be repairing and adding to their nest, they use the same one year after year and although they all nest together in a heronry the male of each pair guards his nest fiercely to prevent theft of his nesting materials … so from late winter/early spring the herons are very busy.

 

We have pond snails and they are a popular delicacy with our visiting pair of crows, Arthur and Guinny . You can hear them crunching the shells from halfway down the garden.

 

Yes, herons are quite fascinating to watch @Anna42 annd I wonder where they go too. Ours visit usually in October and then anytime between January and March. We’ll get them everyday for a week or so, maybe 10 days, and then they vanish again until the next year.

We don’t have any fish, never have not because of the herons. They eat out frogs, quite gruesome watching them drown the poor thing and then slowly watch the lump going down their throat. The first few times, I was convinced the would choke, the frogs are so large in comparison to their necks