Duckling Antics and Memories

We now have some new ducklings in the pen at the end of the garden - some of them have been incubated and some are natural but 'rescued' to save them from the beastly crows that keep raiding our eggs and stealing our babies.  It is lovely to hear them chirping away in the the small arc.

Yesterday they gave us all a fright though,  they managed to escape their arc and the pen and got out on the pond.  They are pretty quick swimmers when this size and with 14 of them all racing around the pond it took quite a while to get them back in again - much wading in the pond and using a large net.  What they forget is that they don't float very well at this age as they don't have the benefit of the wax like secretions that a mum would normally give them.  When they were all eventually rescued and returned to their pen they needed a lot of drying off and most of them looked very sorry for themselves.  Happily they are back to normal now none the worse for their adventure - and thankfully none took a trip with the crows!

We have some other new ducks arrived into the garden as well this week (and they may have been responsible for letting the little ones out!!) 4 new girls who are about 18 months old have come to join us from a home where they were dearly loved but could not look after them any more.  There are two magpie ducks among these.  They will have a few days in the pen before coming out to meet the rest of us - we are looking forwards to meeting them.

Last weekend we saw the first leaves put on the Memory Tree in the garden and they look so pretty. The whole family came to pay their respects to their grandmother/mother.  What a nice family - they even thought to feed us too, we hope to see them again.

the leaves are engraved with the 'memory'

The Memory Tree with the first glass leaves installed

Taking an occasional stroll around the car park is a bit frowned upon by the staff as they worry that we will get run over - however we often do it at this time of year (when we are trying to find our own private space for woo-ing (isn't this what owls do to?)).  Before I got shoo-ed back in to the gardens I spotted this lovely car - just wanted to share it with you.

A very 'Civil'-ized weekend!

As the bank holiday weekend arrived true to form so the weather got a bit wetter and a bit chillier out here in the gardens at the Jinney Ring.   This was a bit of a shame for the two civil weddings that took place but happily it did not spoil either day....

Firstly Dani married Anthony on Saturday.  We have seen the couple on a number of occasions, but had never seen Dani (Danielle) out of jeans - so were 'wowed' when she arrived at 1:30pm ready for a small civil ceremony in our meeting room which had been especially decorated in her colours for the big day.

Dani with her father and bridesmaids on their was to the ceremony

Teal was the wedding colour

Once the marriage contract was completed we saw a lot of the Bride and Groom as their photographer took them around the gardens for lots of photographs.  After this they went into the restaurant for their 'Wedding Breakfast' (personally don't get this as it was nearly our tea time - breakfast was hours ago!).  They had a specially designed menu cooked by Shirley the chef, they all seemed very happy at the end of it!  Finally lots more people arrived and they had a party, dancing in the Barn, it all looked very nice.

The next day there was a change of colour for the wedding ceremony of Sophie and Russell.  They  
wanted a really relaxed wedding at home so decided to just have the Civil ceremony and photos with us.  For this one the wedding party were all congregating in the gardens when the rain came, really hard and heavy - fortunately everyone go under cover in the garden marquee and waited until it subsided!  We ducks loved it - it was like a really hard massage!  It did not spoil the day for the Bride and Groom who made their vows and and got some lovely (if stormy) photos too.

Storm clouds could not spoil the day for Sophie and Russell

We thought we were in for a bit of a rest after this wedding party left but it was not to be - at 4pm a coach arrived and we had a large group of French visitors arrive.  They were all from Gruchet le Valasse which is in Normandy and the town is twinned with Redditch.  These visitors were very appreciative but as it was a bit wet and windy they did not spend much time with us, we were of course practicing our best 'charlatan' (quack) for them!  They moved into the restaurant at 6pm and had a typical English Sunday Roast meal with their Redditch hosts - there were nearly 9o guests in total so the staff were working hard.  

It has been pretty lively on the pond this week too - one of my Call duck friends arrived on the pond with 7 ducklings on Thursday - here she is showing them how to get out of the water.

New arrivals

Yesterday we also saw some new Mallard ducklings too - they diced with death getting to the pond though, as the daft mum walked them through the garden next door on the way here - she has clearly forgotten the two large dogs and the cat that live there!