LAST weekend, we splashed through the traditionally English summer to Hardwick Park at Sedgefield, hoping that the drizzley clouds would lift and allow us a dry walk. It was, we observed, nice weather for ducks...

And at Hardwick Park, we were waylaid by ducks. Squadrons of them. They hang out beside the visitor centre and ambush you as you walk down to the serpentine lake, demanding that you buy them a 50p bag of seed.

They are very tame – I held out a cupped handful of seed and within a second I had 12, perhaps 15, green necks drilling their blunt beaks into my palm. The seed vanished; my palm felt lightly scoured.

Angrily waving its long white neck in the middle of this mallard mayhem was a swan – no 911, according to the tag on its leg. With 911 were five fluffy cygnets that the ducks were tumbling over, so the swan tried to bludgeon every passing mallards with its beak, pulling out feathers.

The cygnets were rubbish out of water, and collapsed in a heap on the path, their long legs folding under them like a deckchair on the beach. Just as it is impossible to re-erect a deckchair, so it is impossible to reassemble a cygnet, so they stayed in their heap, stabbing at the seed, stabbing at the grass, stabbing at the mallards.

Then 911 turned its attention to my handful of seed. With a shovel for a beak, it is not designed to daintily peck at small pieces of seed, so it grabbed my fingers and pulled them down its throat until the seed rolled down its neck.

Swans are regarded as graceful, but there was nothing delicate about this manoeuvre. It was carried out in silence, despite the ancient word “swan” meaning “sound”. No one knows why the mute swan is named after a sound: perhaps it is from its rhythmical wingbeat; perhaps it’s from its noisy hissy fit when angry; perhaps it’s from the belief that just before the swan dies, it sings a beautiful melody – its swansong.

As 911 yanked at my finger, I tried to see if there were any notches on its beak. The Queen owns all swans unless a local landowner marks them out as his own. In olden days, he would score their beaks with his symbol – the pub name, the Swan With Two Necks probably comes from a landowner who marked his birds’ beaks with two nicks.

It was strange to see 911 feeding from me because in medieval times, roast swan was a Briton’s favourite Sunday dinner. Henry III stayed at York over Christmas 1251 and ordered that all northern landowners should donate a swan for his lunch – 351 turned up so he feasted on 20 tons of swanmeat.

I retrieved my fingers from 911’s beak, and stood backwards onto a family of coots. I’d never noticed their feet before – they are not webbed, like a duck’s, but look more like the strands of a Christmas-flowering cactus.

Being so close to a coot enabled me to examine the white fleshy bit down the front of its face. It is featherless, which is where the expression “bald as a coot” comes from.

My consideration of the coots was interrupted by an outbreak of consternation among the mallards. 911 had grabbed a male by the neck and was swinging him around, like an Olympic hammerthrower beginning his revolutions. Suddenly, 911 released, and the mallard sailed over the heads of the other waterbirds. Instinctively, I shouted a warning: “Duck!” But the ducks didn’t take any notice.