Long life: I passed a death sentence on two ducklings

My collection of poultry here in Northamptonshire (consisting at present of six ducks and eight hens) includes two little chattering call ducks named Boris and Marina. I called the drake Boris after the Mayor of London, and its partner Marina after the Mayor’s wife. The poultryman who sold them to me said that call ducks were so devoted to each other that if one of them died the other would inevitably die soon afterwards. So I became concerned a few weeks ago when Marina disappeared, and Boris was left swimming around without her on my garden pond.

But he didn’t seem nearly as disconsolate as I would have expected (in fact, he didn’t seem disconsolate at all), and after a few days it was clear why. For Marina had neither died nor deserted him. She suddenly started to reappear at feeding time, flying 50 yards out of a shrubbery to the side of the pond, and I decided that she must have made a nest and be sitting on some eggs. I never found the nest, but I was right. For just a few days ago I went down to the pond to find her reunited with Boris and swimming about with four little brown balls of fluff in tow.

Although tiny, these ducklings showed great vivacity, paddling gaily round in circles, ignoring their mother’s calls to order, and stopping only occasionally to rest briefly on a water-lily pad. But I started to worry when Boris and Marina, evading their parental responsibilities, settled down in the middle of the pond on the base of a sculpture three inches above the water level where the ducklings were unable to join them. The little creatures seemed to be growing tired as they floundered about frustratedly in the water below.