Long life | 17 January 2013

The advent of freezing weather in Northamptonshire is making me worry about my ducks. I have eight of them of four different breeds now sitting on the base of a stone sculpture in the middle of my ornamental pond, some of them with their heads tucked under their wings, as if hiding from the world, and others staring disconsolately across the great stretch of ice surrounding them. The pond normally protects them against foxes, because foxes don’t swim; but as soon as it is covered with ice, the foxes can walk across it and massacre the entire flock if they feel like it. A man at the local garage told me that exactly this had happened to his ducks one winter.

The booklet I bought on duck ‘management’ warns of another danger faced by ducks when their pond gets iced over. ‘Realising that the ducks need water, you may be tempted to go out on the lake and punch a hole in the ice for the ducks to drink,’ it says. ‘They will soon find the water and slip in for a swim, but as they are surrounded by an edge of ice it will be difficult, if not impossible, for them to scramble out, and having become exhausted by their efforts, they will soon succumb to the cold water. Many ducks are lost this way every year.’ So the booklet says you should provide them with bowls of fresh water twice a day, which is a depressing task in this vile weather and when you are suffering from a cold.

I always used to think that ducks were much nicer than chickens, more beautiful to look at and more amusing to watch. The contrast between their graceful glide over water and their clumsy waddle on land is especially entertaining.