As soon as the lane thawed enough for us to get up the hill, we set out to collect eight tiny ducklings from a local, organic poultry farm. They travelled home in a box with a hot water bottle floor, then moved into the dining room, to more spacious accommodation with chick crumbs ad-lib and an infra-red lamp to keep them warm. Unlike chicks, ducklings are obsessed with water right from the start. I lowered in a drinker with a channel of water too shallow to drown in (without a mother’s oils, their down is not waterproof) and, as if magnetised, they all raced to it and settled down to dabble their beaks and splash as best they could. Within an hour the drinker’s reservoir was empty, the shavings around were all soggy, and a pile of happy ducklings lay concked out, comatose, tucked up to each other under the lamp.
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