We were relaxing on bank holiday monday when we heard a bit of commotion coming from outside. I went to the window and had a look out to discover a couple of Mallards (picture below) strutting around our back garden. The male was quacking at the female, and she was quacking back with her neck compressed into her body while they were chasing each other around. They were clearly courting!

Like the paparazzi that I am I was straight out there with my camera snapping a hundred or so photos of them, thinking of catchy headlines like “Ducks caught in drunken romp shame!” and “Calls for ASBOs for frisky Mallards!”.

Well, that wasn’t the end of the story. One of the girls next door spotted that the ducks have in fact decided to nest in our back garden! You can see the female sitting on some eggs here:

We’ve read up on what to do to help them out, how long the eggs incubate for, when to expect them to hatch and so on – and we’re really looking forward to seeing some wee ducks coming into the world in our own back garden! I’ve never had ducks nesting in my garden before so it should be really interesting. I’ll keep you posted as things develop!