Today’s the day! Today I opened the pop door of the duck house. But it didn’t go quite as expected.

As mentioned yesterday, I didn’t expect them all to go into the pond… but I didn’t anticipate what actually happened: instead of the new ducks joining Bert in the pond, Bert joined them in the duck house!

We began the day the same as usual, opening up the duck house and refilling their waterer and pool:

And the usual treats:

Sven, Sonja, Cora:

Then I opened the pop door, that little door that leads to a ramp into the pond; here it’s partway open:

Looking in through the pop door at some surprised ducks:

Almost immediately, Bert hopped out of the pond onto the ramp and into the house. He really wanted to be with them. Here he’s to the right of Betty:

Bert in the duck house:

Bert’s the one at the back:

Bert in front:

Looking through the vent of the duck house:

Bert is on the ground, Betty on the steps:

He didn’t show any aggression towards them, or vice versa; they seem to have successfully gotten used to each other through the fence.

I decided to add more ceramic pots to the pond as islands, anticipating the new ducks sleeping outside (in due course); these are three spare pots:

I added two of them near the existing one (the square one on top of a concrete block):

And the third in a shallower part, since it was smaller:

While wading in the pond, I took some pictures of the ducks; here Bert is watching me from the pop door:

After lunch, back at the duck house, I noticed lots of bees drinking from the pond; it’s a hot day today (95° F), so the bees are extra thirsty:

The ducks still hadn’t ventured into the pond, so I opened the run fence on the pond side, to see if that’d help. Spoiler: nope:

The ducks watching from the house:

View from across the pond:

As I write this, the new ducks still haven’t ventured into the pond. We’ll see if they do later, or maybe another day.