It is my day off so earlier today I drove out along the peninsula with a bag full of camera gear. I turned into the carpark at MacAndrew Bay, thinking that perhaps a leisurely coffee at a table overlooking the beach would be a good way to start taking photos but I had to swerve to avoid a great knot of ducks writhing its way across the tar seal. A young female, small and exhausted, was stuggling beneath a jostling mass of drakes, perhaps six or eight of them who were all striving to copulate with her. They grasped her and climbed on her, pushing each other aside, not fighting but careless in their single mindedness. I asked myself if I should intervene? Here was nature, red in tooth and claw, doing its normal everyday thing, and who am I to impose my anthropomorphistic disgust on a perfectly natural phenomenon? My inner struggle lasted about as long as it took to put the car in neutral and turn it off. I opened my door and approached them. They were so intent that I got within an a