DOZENS OF DUCKS

DOZENS OF DUCKS
In the bad old days before the ladies colleges of Oxford became
coeducational, when female undergraduates had to demonstrate that they
could punt gracefully enough to satisfy the Principal before being
allowed to take a punt on the Cherwell, there were few ducks beyond the
confines of the University Parks. Somehow the dillies and drakes of the
Isis and their cousins on the lower Cherwell did not venture into the
upper reaches where the college punts lay sedately moored in spring and
summer. Among the maiden dons of mature years, a sadness lingered as
they strolled along river banks where no ducks nested and gazed on
waters in which no mother duck noisily steered her flotilla of
ducklings through the shallows overhung with willow trees. One spring,
a discreet sub-committee was formed from Senior Members of the Garden
Committee. Tactfully it claimed the task of wildlife preservation, but
everyone knew that it was a committee dedicated to ducks, precisely to
wild mallards. Two by two, in stout brogues and warm woollen stockings,
protected from the brisk wind by serviceable tweed suits, the good
ladies of the sub-committee walked purposefully in search of suitable
nesting places. History disagreed with philosophy, modern languages
argued with mathematics, literature clashed with theology over what a
mother mallard really needed to make her feel at home. No agreement was
reached, but as with many academic issues, the relish lay in the
invigorating process of dispute.

Only one person on the Sub-Committee was not invited to participate in
these rambling symposia on waterfowl. Miss Hereward was considered to
represent a race apart. She was the only Member of the Senior Common
Room who was not a product of Oxford University. She had begun her
academic life at the other place, Cambridge. Her appointment at Oxford
had been a hotly contested issue and she had been made to feel less
than welcome, a necessary evil in an imperfect world. After her first
year at the college, she had found herself politely tolerated and had
been grudgingly co-opted onto the present Sub-Committee. But none of
the others thought it worthwhile actually to seek her opinion. Just for
once she would like to do something to prove herself, even if only in
the matter of ducks. Ducks for the college assumed great significance
for her. Miss Hereward went to the Parks and saw eggs were already
being tended by placid dillies, while drakes paraded and preened, silky
dark green heads held high. Next time she visited to observe the family
life of ducks, she had soft tennis shoes on her feet and moved very,
very quietly. So gently did she creep among the ducks that they seemed
to ignore her presence. She carried her bicycle basket, the kind with a
lid, like plump fishing kreel of wicker. She placed it in the long
grass near the water and sprinkled a selection of tasty crumbs inside.
Then she sat and waited. A mother duck raised herself from her eggs and
waddled over to the basket. She stretched her neck over the edge, but
the crumbs were out of reach. The dilly sat back on her tail and
thought, her head tilting from side to side, bright beady eyes fixed on
the source of unreachable food. Miss Hereward willed the duck to dare.
The duck edged nearer to temptation. She rested her breast against the
wicker and stretched her neck to look inside the basket again. With
reckless determination she fluttered up, put her webbed feet on the
edge, sensed the basket tipping and fell awkwardly inside. Miss
Hereward lunged for the lid and closed it, fastening the strap into the
buckle. Taking an egg box out of her ample handbag, she then collected
five warm turquoise shelled eggs from the nest left by the mother duck,
whose struggles were causing the bicycle basket to bump around on the
grass. The eggs safe in their box and the box secure in her handbag,
Miss Hereward picked up the jostling bicycle basket and set off back to
the college gardens and the river bank where, as yet, no ducks
nested.

With steady stride Miss Hereward made her way past the boathouse and
through the college gardens beside the river. Gently setting down the
now unmoving, basket, she knelt beside an old pollarded willow where
the bank was tiered into two levels, the upper partly concealing the
lower. She plucked up grass, pressing and smoothing it into a springy
inviting bowl shape. Opening the egg box, she tenderly positioned the
duck's eggs in their new nest. She unbuckled the strap on the basket
and laid it on its side, so the lid fell open.
The mother duck emerged stretched out her wings, shook all her feathers
and flexed her neck, before she saw the eggs and cautiously lowered
herself onto the nest. She began to preen her breast feathers and then
her wings, lifting her tail to settle herself over her eggs with small
throaty quacks. Miss Hereward retreated silently, picking up the basket
as she withdrew, leaving the dilly to her own devices. Her small
triumph warmed her loneliness. Let the sub-committee talk, she was a
woman of action and she was determined to succeed. Just before the
Parks were due to close at dusk, Miss Hereward returned there. She had
a strong sense of family values, so capturing a drake was essential to
her plan. She had also been forced to recognise that ducks were
polygamous. She had reservations about human polygamy, but in the
natural world, particularly in the private life of ducks, it had to be
accepted. That evening, a young male was captured in the bicycle basket
trap and took eagerly to the water as soon as he was released near Miss
Hereward's nesting female. The female splashed into the river beside
the male and they went up-tails together to feed, apparently happy in
their new territory. It took four more journeys at various times of
different days to collect three more females, with their respective
clutches of eggs, and one more male. Miss Hereward spaced out the
grassy nests, so the dillies were not within sight of one another,
unless they went to swim and then they were gregarious, quacking
amiably as they circled and dipped their beaks in search of food. The
drakes ranged further, but seemed to feel secure in this otherwise duck
free area. The colony had been established.
Her strategy fully implemented, Miss Hereward put away her basket and
the egg box against the time when she might need to augment the duck
population in the future.

Meanwhile the sub-committee met and discussed ways and means of
attracting nesting mallards and their mates to the college property.
Miss Hereward held her peace. Her reticence went unremarked. She was
not expected to contribute to the sub- committee's weighty
deliberations, after all she was an outsider. But Miss Hereward's cup
of contentment was almost full. Her ducks were already thriving on the
far upstream section of the college riverbank. She had been surprised
to see her original group of settlers welcome new immigrants who were
looking perhaps for a less crowded home than in the overpopulated
Parks. Miss Hereward's solitary life had been enriched by her daily
visits to her ducks. She usually went before breakfast to see them
while the mists of early morning lay on the river like ribbons of smoky
chiffon and only the drakes were patrolling, one webbed foot tucked up
on their backs, the other sleepily paddling. One cool, calm morning
there was a stir along the water's edge and she heard high-pitched,
short, soft sounds, not full throated quacks, amidst much splash and
flurry. A flash of wings and waving grass, then the round fluffy shapes
of newly hatched ducklings, like so many dark brown powder puffs,
dropped into the water with their mother standing guard over them.
Turning her head from side to side, checking for possible danger, the
mother duck launched herself into the water to join her young, all five
of them, and put herself at the head of her brood. Miss Hereward smiled
to herself. She was certain they were the hatchlings of those first
five eggs that she had laid so carefully in the grassy nest she herself
had made.

The time had come for her to savour her triumph. The sub-committee met
that very day and Miss Hereward broke her silence to report that ducks
had at last made their home on college land. Indeed she told her
incredulous colleagues, there were already ducklings to be seen and if
they would be quiet, so the ducks were not disturbed, she would show
them where they were. Reluctant to believe that Miss Hereward should be
the one to have such privileged information, the ladies followed her
out into the college gardens. For the first time since she had arrived
in college, Miss Hereward took the lead and her colleagues meekly
followed her. Treading softly and unspeaking, the sub-committee wound
its way through the gardens to the riverbank. Miss Hereward halteded
her colleagues within sight of the river, where she could see not one,
but two flotillas of ducklings being piloted along by their mothers,
while dillies sat on nests and drakes waddled about in the dappled
shade. Miss Hereward raised her eyebrows and looked at her companions,
as if to say: "You see?" Philosophy gasped, a sigh escaped history's
lips and mathematics exclaimed: "Ducks! My goodness, dozens of ducks!"
Miss Hereward smiled. Their astonishment was reward enough. She was
warmed by their pleasure and she said not a word. Dozens of ducks still
crowd the college riverbank. They are known Hereward's Brood.

? LINDY MCNAUGHTON JORDAN, 2002 (1,620 words)