#cute ducks

Ducks walking in snow ❄️ 

via@thesassyducks​ instagram

I love sleepy ducks  

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Thump thump [Sound on] 

via@thesassyducks​ on instagram

Please enjoy these ducks changing their minds 

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Meet my six lovely ladies!!!!! After years of waiting, and then a few more months during lockdown, I finally have the gorgeous little flock I’ve always wanted (will properly introduce the boys in the next post!)

From left to right in the bottom photo: Daffodil and Gertrude, the Dutch Hookbills, Iris and Thomasina, the Miniature Silver Appleyards, and Effie (The Duchess) and Gwendolyn, the Welsh Harlequins!

They’re all about 3 or 4 months old and we drove up to Suffolk to buy them from Anglia Waterfowl about a month ago! I am deeply, deeply in love with them <3 <3 <3

A few beautiful Australian Shelducks at WWT Slimbridge, looking super glossy and gorgeous in the sun.

Native to Australia, as the name suggests, these large ducks nest in tree hollows or in holes on banks. The female is distinguished by a ring of white feathers around the eye, as in the bottom pic.

A super sleepy Andean Goose at WWT Slimbridge.

This little cutie (look at that tiny pink beak!) is not in fact a goose, but is more closely related to the Shelduck. They are terrestial grazing geese normally found at high altitudes in the Andes in South America and only take to the water when threatened.

A male Tufted duck sitting on the warm shore at WWT Slimbridge, surrounded by feathers and quacking his head off.

A handsome Redhead Drake at WWT Slimbridge, with his distinctive ruddy brown head and golden eye. Similar in appearance to the Canvasback, these diving ducks are the most common breeders in the US and the females are notorious to parasitizing Canvasback nests by laying their eggs in them like the cuckoo.

Visiting a waterfowl centre is top of my list of activities for when lockdown eases and (more importantly) once it’s actually safe to go out.

The girls enjoying the pond on their first day out into their run!

Poultry Resort is actually a converted tennis court that was already here when we bought the house. Since we have a lot of foxes, badgers and even mink (invasive species imported from America) coming through our garden, we had to make the pen very secure and figured using the existing fencing would be a good place to start! It’s ended up being a very luxury poultry enclosure indeed, hence the name, but the pond is especially lovely. Duck heaven, right?

Wrong! They refused to get on it for almost a fortnight after the first day of absolutely adoring it! Why? They were frightened of the wind! In order to keep the pond fresh, we have a floating island that uses the large quantities of duck poo as a fertiliser and naturally cleans the water. Unfortunately, in the wind it travels about and that was very scary! We ended up anchoring it more firmly and now they’re super happy!

At the back with the splash of white on her wing is Gertrude (Gertie for short!) my last, gorgeous chatty little girl.

Gorgeous little Iris, the smallest of my ducks, a dark phase Miniature Silver Appleyard! She’s also my father’s favourite because she’s so pretty!

The first day when we got them home, we took the ducks out of the carrier one by one to ring them for easy identification before popping them in the small run attached to their houses, so they wouldn’t be overwhelmed by the whole pen on the first day. Even though she was the smallest (they were all dinky then, most doubled in size in the next few weeks before we introduced the boys, but not Iris!) she fought tooth and nail to be put down, wiggling fiercely!

Since both Iris and Thomasina can fly, we’ve had to clip their wings (this doesn’t hurt them at all, but stops them from flying up and out of the pen and getting into trouble). Again, Iris gave us hell! She’s a super feisty duck!

This is Gwen, my dark phase Welsh Harlequin, who for some reason is twice the size of Effie! She’s a big, gentle girl with a very deep voice and I love her. She’s top duck in the flock by virtue of her size (it didn’t take much to sort out the pecking order, she sat on the others XD).

Despite being the biggest, she leaves it to the Hookbills to lead the way and explore new places, and to the tiny terror trio (the mini appleyards and Effie) to put the boys in their place. We think she might be a little older than the others, as she already had her adult wing feathers. She’s happiest when she’s floating about on the pond and there’s plenty of food being thrown her way - which is maybe why she’s got so big!

This is Effie A.K.A The Duchess, so named because she quacked for the entire two hour drive home from Anglia Waterfowl where we bought these beauties. She had several complaints about the poor quality of transport XD

She’s a light phase Welsh Harlequin and a very sassy lady! She’s super pretty and she knows it. Another incredibly loud quacker, when we hear her in the distance we say ‘oh, Effie has made a funny joke again’ because it sounds like she’s laughing.

Welsh Harlequins, it may surprise you to know, originated in Wales and were bred from the Khaki Campbell by Leslie Bonnet.

This beautiful girl is Daffodil, or Dill for short, one of my darling Dutch Hookbills! This picture was taken soon after we first got them, so she still has a lil bit of baby fluff on her head!

Dill and her sister Gertie are the most friendly of the bunch and also the most bold and inquisitive. If i sit in the run with them, they’ll come right up to me to investigate, tipping their heads to one side to look up at me. They lead the way into new territory, like the pond, and are the first out of their house in the mornings.

Dutch Hookbills are quite a rare breed, and before I got these two, I had never met one before! Their name comes from their characteristic curved bill, which i think gives them such a sweet face!

This is Thomasina! She’s a light-phase Miniature Silver Appleyard and she’s named after the man who originally bred the Minis, Tom Bartlett.

She may be small, but she’s super feisty and sassy! She has a very loud voice and is not afraid to use it! Sometimes when I’m in my room which is quite some distance from the Poultry Resort (this is what we call the main pen that houses the chickens (Hen Village) and the ducks (Duck Beach)) I suddenly hear a great big quacking sound and it’s often this little girl.

When we introduced the boys to the girls, Thomasina was not impressed! The others ran away from the boys (and the boys, being super nervous, also ran away) but Thomasina charged them. When they started to defend themselves from this little fury, she went for their ankles!

And here are my gorgeous boys! Mr Darcy (top) and Sir Francis Drake (bottom)! They’re Indian Runner Ducks from the flock at Alde Garden, and their grandmother was a duck named after me!

I adore my chunky boys even though they’re very foolish - we call them the twerps because they are very silly. During lockdown they lived in a temporary pen on our lawn whilst Duck Beach was being finished, but that meant I could see them from my bedroom window whilst I did my uni exams!

Darcy is the bolder of the two and the more chatty, but Francis is better behaved at bedtime! They both adore lettuce and mealworms but turn their beaks up at peas and cucumber!