A mandarin duck at Fromehall Mill pond

When I take my car for some work to be carried out, such as today’s bleeding air from the brake fluid after recent pad replacements, I usually go for a wander while the work takes place. This work was being done for free as it was recognised as part of the original job. I like this company very much as this is a example of their approach to customer care.

Their workshop is on the floodplain of the River Frome between it and the Stroudwater canal about eighty yards to the north. It is close to the still functioning and successful Lodgemore Mill, the only mill still producing cloth in Stroud, which formerly had at least eighteen mills powered by the water of the Frome. 

The even older Fromehall Mill, built of Cotswold stone still stands close to my garage’s workshop called which is where I walked to. The mill pond is rather silted up because it is now separated from the river’s flow by a manmade bank. But in the middle of the pond is a small island covered in a few trees and shrubs and a favoured protected site for birds, who can’t be attacked there by foxes. Today the pond had its resident single male swan, which sadly lost its mate last year.

There were several mallard ducks as well as a pair of little grebes swimming and diving for food. A couple of moorhens and a coot milled about on the water. But my attention was caught by the rarer appearance of three mandarin ducks which have been reported in the area, but which I hadn’t seen in person before. One of them swam up to the island and clambered onto a long low lying branch of a a tree and perched for sometime as it preened itself.

One of the other two mandarins clambered onto the island itself and I watched it for a few minutes. It then moved down to the water’s edge and looked at its reflection as it prepared to drink.