Family

This is Mummy duck and Daddy duck and the 5 teenage ducks and... well, the other Daddy duck.

As ducks are rather free and easy and we have 2 ducks and 2 drakes, as well as the fact that the ducks lay in the same nest it's kind of hard to know who are the parents of our 5 ducklings.

Ethelred is the big pale fellow on the right. The adults are all moulting at the moment and once Ethelred's finished he will have a dark green head, a white collar, reddish brown breast and silvery grey feathers.

Our other drake, Spike (top right)is black, shot through with green and purple. You can see them both here.

Shade (behind the sledge and looking a bit brown at the moment) is the same colouring as Spike but after the last moult a lot of white feathers came in where the drakes have been a bit over enthusiastic grabbing hold.

The second duck is Trout. She's still in the nursery pen with the 8 little ducklings she has managed to raise.

Of the 5 ducklings we raised. Peep is a mid brown and the others all black. Some have little patches of cream on them but mainly they are black. It is possible, but probably unlikely in the case of the black ones, that they may change colour after their moult into adult feathers later in the year.

They are all pretty much fully grown now, albeit with a bit of filling out to do. And looking great. So far 3 of the ducklings have developed a quack, so they are female. We are still waiting to find out about the other two.

It's funny to think that all 5 ducklings could fit in the sledge just a few few weeks ago.