"There once was a yellow duckling..."

We walked back up to Killingworth Lake this morning to see how the various little chicks were getting on (see here and here).

We didn't see the Crested Grebe and her chick from last week's main blip, although we were told that they had been seen earlier this morning so we're glad to know that they're still OK. I was going to use an update shot of a coot chick for this week's main photo until we came across this cute little yellow Mallard duckling. It had 13 siblings, all of which were the normal brown stripey colour: some of them can be seen along with the yellow one in the first extra. We do hope it survives as it's not nearly so well camouflaged as its siblings.

I still wanted to continue to document the development of the coots, so the second extra shows one of the brood cautiously tiptoeing down the side of the nest and testing the water just before taking the plunge. They've grown quite a bit since last Sunday and are now all happy to leave the nest from time to time for a swim.