Breeding of a rare species of duck has not gone to plan after the only two remaining males fell for each other.

Blue ducks Ben and Jerry were introduced to the last remaining female, Cherry, at the Arundel Wetland Centre in West Sussex. However they seemed much more interested in each other than her.

The blue duck is a dark slate-grey with a chestnut-flecked breast and a paler bill and eye. The pinkish-white bill has fleshy flaps of skin hanging from the sides of its tip. The male's call is an aspirated whistle, and the female's is a rattling growl - perhaps just a bit too butch for Ben and Jerry!

Warden Paul Stevens said he was disappointed that efforts to produce offspring had failed but said the two male birds made "a lovely couple".

"They stay together all the time, parading up and down their enclosure and whistling to each other as a male might do with a female he wants to mate with," he added.

Ben was the first to be introduced to Cherry, but neither seemed keen. Then Jerry was flown(!) in from another  sanctuary in London. Mr Stevens said, "Cherry showed some interest in him. She displayed typical mating behaviour - she approached him and called to him, she even looked like she was nesting. We thought it was great and it was all going to happen but nothing ever did."

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