GOOD WEATHER FOR DUCKS

Well, the title says it all really ... well almost.

Any of you remember these two? 

A sad, burnt out pair >>>

They appeared on March 31st in a post titled "A Stick Hunter". Where I had promised they would be travelling back with me and would appear again. Since then, they have been scrubbed up and getting used to Welsh life, which they like.

<<< Well they sure look happier now and you might wonder what it is they are chatting about, apart from the state of Welsh weather that is. You will find out in good time, but meanwhile the daft dog was enjoying the pleasures of ponds, in this case an artificial one. This is in the forest, where a few years ago the water course was dammed and a hydro-electric pumping station took the water right up the hillside to wash coal. In the days when the mines were working, only "large coal" was sold, the rest was tipped up on the top. Recently the need for coal meant that the tipped stuff was assayed, found to be good quality but had to be washed.

There used to be an old iron bridge here, when Ffin was just a young pup but it was removed for the pump house, which was fenced off, so Ffin could no longer swim here. Talking to a Forestry Commission guy today, a new bridge is scheduled here, so that the heavy forestry vehicles can have access to the other side of the valley and start felling again.

Meanwhile although not actually raining when we were out, the trees and tall undergrowth were dripping wet. Wild raspberries grow in profusion here ...

And ... with a good few days of sunshine they will ripen fast and become a free feast.

Now, in a film with Paul Newman in ... "Cool Hand Luke" he comes out with a famous line regarding a bet, he says ... "I can eat fifty eggs." Well today I ate over fifty strawberries, now obviously, I am not at Wimbledon and ... sadly there was no cream but I managed to gather my first handful of wild strawberries. Delicious!
Now, to get back to those ducks ...
they got taken out for a bit of an adventure today and were shown where two rivers meet. The Ebbw Fach and Ebbw Fawr (that's little and large in Welsh) and after the past days of rain the two were in full, white frothy flow. Even this mallard pair were not prepared to go for a swim and decided (wisely) to just watch the goings on from a safe place.

But for the two Fen migrants it was a rare chance to witness a sight they had never seen and ... they seemed to enjoy their adventure. To think just a couple of months ago they had been left in newspaper and badly burnt and now they are starring on Dafad the Daft's Blog. You never know, they may appear again, it's just a case of when ...