Bog Myrtle & Peat

After a second fine night on the flight pond by the Solway during which I missed three or four fine mallard and had my hair parted by a low flying lapwing, I feel like the world of wildfowling is knocking on the door and trying to get in. And who am I to ignore the call?

My pond appears to be visited quite regularly by ducks, and I will set aside an evening this week to sit out and see what’s coming in. On the whole, it’s far too deep for a duck pond, but for some reason it is very popular. There are two holes of around ten or twelve feet deep, but the fringes are quite shallow, and the thick weeds seem to capture some of the bruised barley which goes on every morning. At the start of September, I was feeding every three or four days. Now, the feed goes off so quickly that it’s a daily job to keep it topped up. I have a stack of rotting apples which will be mixed in with some mushy frosted potatoes in due course to make a nice duck broth to bulk out the barley, but it’s looking very promising in the meantime.