Seventeen eggs!

Mrs. Mallard has been sitting on these eggs for a while and today must have gone for a break which enabled me to count  them.  The mallards always start off with a large brood but lose most of them (she'd have her work cut out with seventeen chicks though). It's believed that the mystery of the vanishing chicks is that there's a pike in the moat. One was caught a few years ago but ducklings still disappear so it could have a successor.

I've spent most of the day doing a watercolour painting. As there are so many good artists among my blip friends I'll blip a picture if I'm actually pleased with it!