Each time I pass the window I look outside, as there’s always something to notice in this wildlife garden. A perky wren on the drystone wall, a grey wagtail bobbing along the fence, long-tailed tits dancing through the hawthorn. There are binoculars ready on different windowsills. Now it’s something as ordinary as a mallard, but it feels intimate to watch the building of a nest from scratch. A pair has been pottering about the garden for a few days and I’ve woken to the sound of raucous quacking. This morning, the duck was clearly looking for a nest site, traversing in and out of borders, poking about under shrubs and retracing her waddling steps several times. Thanks to staying at the window, I witnessed the moment she chose her spot behind a rose bush and among the spring vibrancy of Bowles’s golden grass. With a few strong thrusts of her orange feet she formed a bowl, tossing aside snowdrop bulbs and yellow aconite seedlings, one deep enough to nestle in so her brown camouflaged back was level with the flower bed. It took just five minutes before she began collecting material to line it. Working steadily through emergent greenery, she deftly picked out last year’s blown leaves. Raffia-like grasses, fragments of hollyhock stem and irises, all teased out surprisingly nimbly by her flat paddle of a beak. Picked up, then rejected, the soggy shrivelled fruits of Japanese quince. Gradually her nest became lined with a duvet of dry lamb’s ears, their furry surface soft and downy. Hunkering down, her wing flash of electric blue no longer visible, she melded into the border. Being so close to the river, there’s usually a mallard nest somewhere in our garden. One year it was under a thatched roof of golden oats grass, another tucked back beneath a cotoneaster. Last summer, a duck, possibly the same one, nested in a spongy mass of thyme and I’d pass close by when I was in the veg garden. Once on eggs, females are reluctant to move – it was in this same border that a woodcock nested – despite being just feet away from my window. The mallard has laid an egg at every sunrise for 10 days now. • Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
Author: Susie White