At least 10 yrs ago (I've lost track but our son was young and he is almost 27 now) maybe longer, we've had a pair of Mallards come to our yard every spring. I had no idea they lived this long in the wild! They come back every year like clockwork.

They feed off the bird feeder spills and hang out in my gardens. Then when Mrs is ready to lay her eggs (typically about 2 weeks), they move down to the stream in front and make a nest. Our Black and White cat (who is on my signature) loves to chase them. So the ducks have various coping strategies to watch for her.

The funniest is sitting on our neighbor's roof (it is a flat Mansard type) and quacking to each other from up there. This morning Mr. flew in, and we looked up and sure enough she was up there. This was a quick opportunity to record the roof behavior, where they have direct viewing angles to the feeder and the seed. (they also like it up there when it rains, because a small pool forms and they like that). My husband calls that roof the ducks' helicopter pad, because it is high up at 2 stories and quite large. And we've noticed that ducks are NOT precise flyers or landers. These ducks do "talk" to each other. We've watched them make various different sounds, bob their heads a certain way, for a few minutes and then take off in the same direction suddenly.
They are funny and very interesting!

So here is Mrs. QuackQuack: Picture #1

Picture #2 is our fountain from last spring...at this time. We don't have any of these flowers yet...we are running about 10 days behind last year.
I hope the fountain is okay for this site...it is a famous statue in Europe after all
.

The ducks love the fountain too. This year we don't have the fountain going yet. If anyone is interested... my FIL loved this statue ...so when he passed back in the early 70's, we got it from MIL who DID NOT want it anymore LOL... It is about 40 yrs old, and I had to glue the head back on...and repair him several times.