Morning walk with ducks

This morning I went walking with Ingrid over de Waal. We got up early in hope to see the sunrise, but his golden face failed us, hiding over a thick spread of clouds. We did not meet a human soul on our walk, but we did meet a herd of ducks, meandering through the street in search for a bite to eat. Among these ducks, the ordinary kind seen everywhere in Europe, we saw a beautiful brightly coloured duck with a shorter beak and curly feathers on its back. We admired it for a while and then continued our course. Later, we found the duck in a bird ABC: it was a male mandarin duck, a duck first imported to Europe from Eastern Asia for captive breeding, however, a population of mandarin ducks are now living in the wild in Britain as a result of the release/escape of captive ducks.

Photo courtesy Benny Prijono, bulukucing.org/birdwatch