"Ducks' Ditty" by Kenneth Grahame

from

“The Wind in the Willows”

All along the backwater, through the rushes tall,

Ducks are a dabbling, up tails all!

With overnight temperatures recently having been dropping to Zero degrees 

and below, expectations have not been high across the Moth Traps, but

Never say Never!

as both

ANGLE SHADES

and 

 MARBLED MINOR

have been added to the Year List while another

KNOTGRASS

has been among the Also Rans!

 On the Main Pond success seems to have been eluding the pair of

 MUTE SWANs

as having abandoned 2 nests with a 3rd havine been destroyed!

Undaunted they sill persevere and at the last count now have a

Fourth Nest with Single Egg

(we will be watching)

While remaining close to home the

 SONG THRUSH

appear to have found better fortune

 as still feeding a brood somewhere among the garden bushes.

On our way north we once again caught sight of the

GLOBEMASTER

taking off

seemingly in the endless quest to keep us all safe one way or another!

Both the Common and the Heath appeared moribund but returning to base after

Victualling and Bunkering Ship

there was found to be a little good fortune left in the day with

 GREEN WOODPECKER

having returned to the garden

 and also likely to be feeding young while we were also just lucky enough to catch the

NHS AIRWAYS AIRBUS

in all its splender

noisily awaiting take off.

China or not we don't know!

 Finally, while thumbing through the archive for something of interest

(we'll find it before long)

we came across a couple of vids and snaps of a real crowd pleaser from a few years ago down

Portland and Weymouth way.

 The 

HOODED MERGANSER

is a saw-bill duck of the America's and an extremely rare visitor to

Great Britain,

with this individual, still in juvenile / winter plumage, found waterlogged in a culvert along

Chesil Beach Road, Portland

back in 2008.

I was onboard the Floating Oil Production Platform Buchan Alpha at the time 

and embarking on what was described then as my

After Midnight Self Flagulation

I telephoned Birdline to hear of its finding. Turning to the

Portland Bird Observatory Website the following day something similar to the

top picture appeared making it look rather like it wasn't going to last another day,

let alone until I returned home. Luckily for me it did and for several years more but not without

a massive amount of conjecture and doubt about its origins, things that could never be proved conclusively one way or the other. 

 What was for certain the Ugly Duckling soon turned out to be one of the

'Showiest Wildfowl on the Planet'

Ducks’ tails, drakes’ tails, yellow feet a-quiver,

Yellow bills all out of sight, busy in the river!