Yesterday 21 ducklings and their mum suddenly appeared in the garden and headed straight for the bird food. I took a quick crapsnap of the proceedings through the rain-flecked window and then got to wondering what we should do about it...... presumably they had walked along 150m of busy road and then along our back lane from a pond to get to our back gate. Dangerous stuff. So ...how were we to get them back safely ? Well, we put on our big coats, because it was pelting down with rain, and we "walked" them all the way back, Mrs Mallard leading the way and me and TSO alongside. Luckily all the motorists were very patient and trundled along behind the entourage. And then they got to the water and jumped in. Not the motorists .... the ducks. Job done. We hope. By a remarkable coincidence, later in the day we parked at a local "viewpoint" and there were two gormless sheep wandering gormlessly in the middle of the road. A road down which lorries zip along gormlessly at 50 mph every 20 minutes or so. We could not see how they had got out, or how we could get them in, so we tried to shunt them down a dinky side path but they bolted and ran into an unfenced ploughed field totally useless to sheep and started gallumphing around randomly. We couldn't work out what to do next, so we waited and watched a bit and eventually they somehow found a gap on the far side of said field and got through it. Whether that was "their" field we had no idea. We figured that was all we could do. Two "rescues" in one morning .... one hopefully successful, one inconclusive. Later in the day we sat outside a cafe eating a scone and swilling coffee, and 7 Swifts appeared ... plus 5 Swallows and three House Martins. There might have been more ... they were skimming over a wood and kept appearing and reappearing all the time. Then we went home ....
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
|