The Duck Hilton

Season's greetings to you all, and all the very best for a prosperous and productive New Year.

I have spent a lot of the day mucking about setting up a new blog... which I hope I've set a link for above!! Click on 'the Duck Hilton' ;-D

On Boxing Day, I am ashamed to say, one of my otherwise indoor cats escaped for literally a few seconds.... at exactly the same time a mud lark fledgling appeared between the pot plants. The result was swift and terrible. I quickly managed to separate them, and could find no wounds on the baby, but the shock, and the possibility of unfound puncture wounds must have been too much.

Later the same day my ducks harassed a second (and also unflighted) member of the family and as a result I gathered up the 3 babies and tried to put them somewhere safe for the parents to claim. The outcome was less than successful, and it was raining. The parent birds refused to have anything to do with them, so several hours later and before they succumbed to the cold and hunger, I had no choice but to gather them up again, set up a brooder box and try to keep them warm, safe and fed. The baby that had been attacked died that evening, another sibling who refused food died the following day, but Muddy is soldiering on. I have him outside most of the day now and already when I call out 'any hungry larks in the house?' he responds with begging noises. I hope he'll learn to fly and be independent in about a week - fingers crossed!! I will keep his story updated on the Duck Hilton blog too :)

Planning to do some rust dyeing this afternoon, but having a lot of fun fiddling about with the new version of Photoshop Elements my husband has installed on this computer, because my Apple, and thus access to my older version of Photoshop CS, is on the blink!!