Long life | 17 January 2013

The advent of freezing weather in Northamptonshire is making me worry about my ducks. I have eight of them of four different breeds now sitting on the base of a stone sculpture in the middle of my ornamental pond, some of them with their heads tucked under their wings, as if hiding from the world, and others staring disconsolately across the great stretch of ice surrounding them. The pond normally protects them against foxes, because foxes don’t swim; but as soon as it is covered with ice, the foxes can walk across it and massacre the entire flock if they feel like it. A man at the local garage told me that exactly this had happened to his ducks one winter.

The booklet I bought on duck ‘management’ warns of another danger faced by ducks when their pond gets iced over. ‘Realising that the ducks need water, you may be tempted to go out on the lake and punch a hole in the ice for the ducks to drink,’ it says.