This evening when I arrived home, two ducks heard my car arrive, and both turned up on the lawn. It was my two most regular ducks. One was the drake with white flecks on his face. I call him Willie. The other one was his mate, the eager Wilma.
When I got out of the car Willie started quacking, and Wilma ran up to about 2m away from me. Enthiusiastic to see if I had anything for her.
While ducks are slightly annoying (read particularly annoying when they quack at 6am outside my window) I get real pleasure in feeding them. The last thing I want is for them to not like me, so whenever I have a chance I feed them. To them my house is a Bethlehem (which means House of Bread).
But I don't just throw out bread. I want something in return. They have to come closer to me than they are comfortable with. I throw the bread close to me, to get them to come near. Wilma has figured this out, but Willie has not really got it down yet.
As a result, I move to one of the spots where I feed the ducks, and Wilma comes and takes some of the bread out of my hand, and Willie looks on nervously, missing out on the bread. Sure I throw him some, and he comes in and gets some of the crumbs that Wilma leaves behind, but he gets a lot less than she does.
There is often a little bread left over from a previous feeding, but it is stale, and not as fresh as the current stuff. If only he would get over his fear of me, he would get to have a good feed of fresh bread, and would also get to interact with me more than he does already.
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