Getting your ducklings in a row

Lancaster Canal, Crooklands, Cumbria

I was impressed with this mother duck. The drake was nowhere to be seen, and she was doing an excellent solo job of closely shepherding her flock of 11 mallard ducklings. They stayed close to her at all times, and were not whizzing around like most of the broods on the River Kent at the moment. So she has a better chance of protecting them from the many predators on the look out for an easy meal.

I stopped to have a walk along the canal on the way home from work. I had had a frustrating walk at lunchtime, persistently failing to get a half decent shot of brimstone, peacock and orange tip butterflies, or of singing chiffchaffs and blackcaps.

Along the canal I picked up a new bird species for the year, one I wasn't expecting to get without travelling further south - a lesser whitethroat (the year total is now 126). I heard his unmistakeable rattly song as I was photographing the ducklings. We don't get many records of them in Cumbria, and I've not heard one in the county for about 12 years. The last time, I was living in Kendal, and there appeared to be a big fall of them one spring day, and they were singing everywhere, including our back garden and the ASDA carpark. They didn't stay long, perhaps they'd been carried too far north on migration by a southerly wind, and after a couple of days they all disappeared.