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We, and the poodle, are delighted to announce our latest pond-life guests - a pair of mallards. They've been there every day now for a week. Not what we expected, but a tad more welcome than the herons.

oo wonder if they will breed

Guess that depends whether there's a male and a female! We often get two males or one male and a couple of females.

When there is a male alone my girlie ducks get a little 'interested' but they are still a bit shy! He, on the other hand, being a different breed of duck doesn't seem to notice them!

Definitely a pair - male and female - and they're behaving as though they're interested in ducklings. Which means, of course, that I may be in for a bit of barrier building if I find the nest because the dog, although he's mostly harmless, has an insatiable curious streak. He's not bad, although we were concerned when he chased a pheasant into the greenhouse. That was an interesting thirty seconds.

Aha!!! Spotted them this morning waddling away from the pond and into the brushwood wildlife run behind the orchard. That saves me building the barriers - the dog has no chance of getting in there. Although how he'll react to a line of ducklings following Mum across the lawn remains to be seen.

I hope you get ducklings! How cool would that be? Just watch out for the nasty herons then - they are always after my baby moorhens.

NEVER EVER AGAIN, I say to myself, assume that it's nice to be visited by different wildlife. The mallards have disappeared. I was really disappointed and began to research them to see if, maybe next year, we could do a little more to make it good for them here.

The buggers eat tadpoles!!!!! That's what they were doing here. The pond, as far as I can make out, has not a single tadpole or froglet remaining. That's a lot of square yards of pond and a lot of frog protein gone bye-byes. And a lot of slug-killing ability.

Next year, I'm sitting next to that pond with a .22 rifle. Anyone got a good recipe for mallard?

Nature's mean isn't it? I haven't seen any frog or toadspawn since I got my ducks. Well they've eaten half the lake bank so there's nothing left for the spawn to cling to.

MKG wrote:Anyone got a good recipe for mallard?

cook it till the skin's crispy and then shred to put in chinese pancakes with cucumber, plum sauce and spring onion.