An early morning visitor.
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For breakfast
I have lots of early morning visitors, the pond at the back of my house has moorhens and mallard ducks. So far this year there have been two broods of moorhens and mallards. The mallards are a pain in the backside over 6 Drakes (male mallards) looking for Hens (female mallards) and territory.
The Mallards are thugs, constantly mugging the moorhens when they are taking food (that I give them) to their chicks. Hell they even steal food from the latest brood of mallard ducklings.
So far none of the previous broods have been moved on, so the pond is very full. Usually the moorhens when they reach adolescence help feed the current brood, if there is a third brood the adults chase off the first brood. The Mallards don't appear to do that and they have lots of fights and come and go as they please.
There is one saving grace, predation, a heron is a frequent visitor, usually to fish (goldfish, dumped and thriving), they also seem to be partial to young ducklings and moorhen chicks (not so much these). The first brood of ducklings started out at 12 of them but that soon dropped to just 6. So far the second brood of ducklings have fared better staring out at 11 and now only 9.
Both the moorhens and mallards camp out in my back garden waiting to be fed, I chase the adult mallards (keeps me active even after my walks) and feed the ducklings and moorhens.
