The excitement in the garden this season has been the resident Mallard duck had decided she would nest at the very bottom of the field, next to the (part buried) fence that stops the chicks escaping. When she had some twelve eggs and a cover made of corrugated sheet that I provided for her early on, she began to sit. All went well until the second week when disaster struck in the shape of a Badger attack. On my morning duties attending to the chickens I found the duck's nest had been completed wrecked. The whole thing had been dragged out from under the tin sheet and shredded. The beast had dug under the wire and all but four eggs had been eaten and those remaining were stone cold and so I thought that's the end of that. On the way back up the field I put the four forlorn eggs under a broody hen thinking that there may be a small chance of saving them. That was some weeks ago and the good news is we now we have four beautiful ducklings and the mother duck has made a new nest at the top of the garden near the house and so should be a little more safe from a badger attack. Fingers crossed.
