Mystery pond drownings

[werdnal]

We were out working in the garden this morning, when my hubby suddenly exclaimed "what the h3ll is that" and pointed to something lying in our pond. He picked up a rake and fished out a dead partridge. We've seen a couple in the area over the last couple years and there was one in our field last week. It didn't appear to have been in the water very long, and was apparently uninjured, so we just assumed it had fallen in and drowned. Whilst we were standing there, I suddenly noticed something else - and we then fished out dead adult rat! Again this appeared uninjured. I thought rats were excellent swimmers - how come it drowned?

Its a bit upsetting, especially the partridge loss. We have had the pond for 12 years now, and its only steep on one side - with a water fall, and the other sides are all at ground level, with a pebble beach to allow wildlife to drink and supposedly offer anything that did fall in an escape route. These are the first casualties we've had in that time. Its just a mystery how both creatures ended up in there. Could the rat have been trying to retrieve the dead partridge and got into difficulty? Could it have chased the partridge into the water, then fell in itself? Could something else have chased them both in?

All very strange and worrying that other wildlife may suffer the same fate.