We have new neighbours. They fly in most mornings and so far, every afternoon.
If the sun's out they sit atop a post sunning themselves, then they might forage around on the bank or have a wee paddle in the stream.
I love watching them and look for themevery day. I'll call them a couple because they are always together, in fact, according to Google my visitors will stay together for life and return to the same nesting area year after year.
They are paradise shelducks and unusually for ducks the female is nicer to look at than the male.
She has a white head and is chestnut coloured body while he has a dark grey body and black head. You can see the white of his wings when he's in flight.
I've tried to get a bit closer than the back fence but as soon as they detect movement they take flight with a lot of noise involved.
Linda Hall is Assistant Editor at Hawke's Bay Today.
Mr Neat's not really that interested, he's more interested in the chickens. He talks to them. Hopefully he can talk them into laying some eggs because at the moment they don't seem the least bit interested in providing us with an omelette.
I think they may be a little bit traumatised after the move.
The paddock where their little houses are is next to the shed where load upon load of stuff arrived a few weeks back. the poor darlings didn't know what was going on.
For me the stress of shifting is slowly ebbing away. But my goodness what a long haul it was.
I'm not talking about the house here. That was packed up and moved, then cleaned and gardens tidied within three days. However, the shed was another story.
It just went on and on and things kept coming out of cupboards and drawers, precious things, of course, things that couldn't possibly be thrown out.
My brother, who helped for what seemed like days on end, kept looking at me and shaking his head.
He could not believe his eyes.
There were trips to the dump as I'm sure there are when anyone moves. It's a good chance to have a cleanout.
There was also a lot of things, mainly from the house, given away and gladly to a new home. We tried our best to only dump what we couldn't rehome.
But that shed seemed to have a secret door that kept spitting out more stuff.
Finally it came to an end and we said goodbye to a house, shed and garden that had been home for almost 17 years.
Now it's time for a new adventure and I'm just loving being a little bit rural with a stream over the fence, and room for a new garden.
I actually enjoyed — perhaps that's too strong a word — maybe I should say — I actually didn't mind ironing on Sunday.
The rain had finally stopped and I set the ironing board up so I was looking out over the stream hoping the ducks would appear.
I've named them Daisy and Donald — not very original but I don't think they will mind.
Already it feels like home and I have even managed to head the right way home every day after work. I did expect to find myself turning into the wrong driveway at least once.
