This picture was taken on 2nd April and shows Mr and Mrs Duck. 
By 6th April we had 6 ducks visiting us all at once and by 9th April we had 10. It seemed as if they were making up for lost time. On 16th June we had our all time record. When I looked out at 5 o'clock in the morning, there were 21 ducks outside. Mr and Mrs Duck need to preen themslves to keep their feathers in good condition.  This female duck is cowering to try and avoid being seen by a drake flying overhead.  A lot of our old friends returned, though sometimes it was hard to recognise them when there were so many. Easily recognised visitors were Mr and Mrs Duck, Little Curl with a new mate, Dotty and her mate, and Palechest 2 and his mate - new visitors this year. One day we came home to find Mr Duck waiting patiently on the doorstep while Mrs Duck came to meet us.  At the end of July the numbers gradually reduced, as usual. But then, to our surprise, we started getting visits from a group of eclipsed drakes. The drakes go into "eclipse" plumage at the end of the breeding season and then moult their wings before regaining their breeding plumage.  Drakes in eclipse plumage Our ducks normally leave before they are fully eclipsed, and we could only think that some new arrivals were visiting us and would remain for the autumn and winter unless we phased out the feeding. We need a break sometime, so we felt that we had to discourage them, and we last saw them on 14th August. But see 2007, as we now think these may have been a family of ducklings. A pair of ducks taking off 
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