I had to try!

Tweet

After the dismaying theft of the duck eggs/ almost-term ducklings by the magpies, I felt I had to do something. I know it’s natural for eggs and baby birds to be preyed upon, and I understand that magpies have to eat and feed their families too… But still the magpies have plenty of alternatives, and I felt so bad for Mrs Mallard who had been sitting there so patiently day after day for three and a half weeks. The incubation period for Mallards is apparently 28 to 30 days, so the ducklings must have been almost ready to hatch. And I know that baby birds ‘talk’ to their mothers from inside the egg. Now there were just two eggs left of the four she started with. So over the night after the last theft I lay in bed thinking of what I could do, and came up with a plan. It isn’t so easy to prevent one type of bird getting to a nest while allowing another, larger, bird through. And of course any kind of bird scaring device would likely scare Mrs Mallard too, or at least cause her a lot of fear and stress. But after a while I realised that I had seen a magpie perching on the bridge over the pond, from where it could probably swoop down to the little bit of land near the nest and then hop across. Meanwhile Mrs Mallard always swam to and from the nest and got in and out of the pond on the far side. And magpies can’t swim. I looked around at what was available and found a big piece of fruit cage netting I had been using to fence around the veg. patch. So I commandeered that, and persuaded Paola to suppress her fears of spiders long enough to come and give me a hand. Together we managed to drape the net over almost all one side of the pond, and fastened it to the bridge above the water with staples. As soon as Mrs Mallard saw us approaching with this huge net she panicked and ran off, but she must have been watching because after a little while she came back, but then retreated when she found we were still there. Now the net was over the water so no magpies could get to the nest, but then neither could Mrs Mallard because it was touching the water. So with some lengths of string and strategically placed stakes I managed to thread the strings underneath the net in such a way as to create a tunnel with the bridge forming the mouth, and ending at the nest. Then we retreated up the garden and waited with bated breath in case Mrs Mallard had been scared away. But she had obviously been waiting because after a few minutes she came flying down, landed at the edge of the pond, and after spending a few minutes bathing she swam under the bridge and out of sight. It seemed that we might have succeeded! All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2026.