Not quite as advertised…

On Thursday, I got a chance to see two reality TV stars. They’re so important that the presenters of the TV show they starred in refused to say where they were papped..

And here they are, ladies and gentlemen, and I’m afraid that you’ll have to imagine your own drum roll. They’re mandarin ducks, and they are even more gorgeous in real life.

I you read up on them, which I did, because I’d never seen anything like them in our beloved park, then you’ll discover that they are quite shy birds who usually nest in trees, often by overhanging willows.

At least they scored one out of two, because this pair seem to be living round by the willows. They’ve also recognised that my daughter and I bring grain with us so they were straight across to us and drove away the mallard ducks and the couple of greylag geese, both of which were much bigger than they are, so that they could feed. We’ve had them feeding from our hands before and I suspect that they either escaped from someone’s garden or simply had enough and went over the wall and went native.

They featured on BBC TV’s Winterwatch, where the presenter Chris Packham refused to identify where they were filming from to protect them. So shall I, but I can promise you that they are even more beautiful in real life and a right pair of feathered con artists. They’re also male because in the bird world the male birds are the show offs while the females are drab coloured so they can hide and protect their chicks. In their favour though, the male Mandarin ducks come back once the ducklings are pushed out of their tree nest and into the water and help to bring them up.

Now, I don’t know if we’ve got any females who are out of sight, but I do hope so, because it’d be amazing if they went native here.

The whole park is amazing at this time of year, as birds nest and everything comes back to life with a glorious whoosh of colour and new life. When I go for my walk there it’s very easy to forget all the doom and gloom in the world. Today, for example, I saw my favourite pair of swans, known to us as Punky and Lucky. Yes, we give them all names and Lucky’s ringing details are LKY while we’ve known Punky since he was a cygnet who had a fishing hook stuck in his beak. We kept him calm till Swan Rescue arrived and performed surgery. My daughter and I are unashamed softies, so from then on we went down every day while it healed so that we could be sure he was feeding. Like most swans, he likes frozen peas, but these days he only gets them as a special treat.

He’s now a gorgeous eight-year-old male who is a very impressive father to his cygnets. He and Lucky are nesting now so there’ll be new balls of grey beautifulness along in a few weeks and the goslings and ducklings will hang round with them because no fox, gull or falcon will have a chance. We are honoured because he doesn’t hiss at us and brings his cygnets to meet us each year and if you’re thinking ‘they can recognise a mug when they see one’ then you are almost certanly right.

We’re seeing peregrine falcons over the house too because they’ve started nesting on top of tall buildings, and when life seems grey and dark and unkind I look to the birds and wonder what you mean by bird brained, because the ones I know seem to be doing a lot better than us!

Have a good week, and escape from the news all you can. Be nice to people instead, because it’ll do a lot more good and if enough of us do it then we might just be able to make a difference.

See you on Tuesday and then I'll tell you about the Mermaid Tail Trail!