jmgoyder

wings and things

Imprinting 2: On the other hand ….

Despite my last post, there is something about this imprinting thing that niggles at my sense of right and wrong, or whatever you want to call it – animal morality? Dunno.

It niggles in the same way that the idea of putting poultry in nappies (see a previous post – many moons ago), niggled. I think it niggles because there is something false and coercive about adopting a baby gosling, duckling, or any infant bird, with the express purpose of imprinting; it seems too much like animal experimentation, almost circus-like.

I put my hand up as someone who was ‘guilty’ of being interested in this imprinting thing – yes. However, when  it soon became apparent that Zaruma (our first duckling), and Pearl (our first gosling), much preferred each other’s company to mine, I realized how silly I was being. After all, they still love me too!

I guess I have always had a strong aversion to coercion so, unless a goose wants to come up and give me a cuddle (a rather bizarre but lovely thing if it happens naturally), I don’t ‘go there’.

Even if I wanted to, guess who would soon stop me? My competitor – Godfrey! And, despite our differences, I have to concede that he is a much better gosling-cuddler than I will ever be because, last time I looked in the mirror, I was still a human. Go Godfrey!

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Imprinting

I find the phenomenon of imprinting absolutely fascinating and it was one of the things that got me interested in acquiring some geese in the first place. Apparently, birds imprint on humans and other species more readily than any other kind of animal, with geese being the most ‘imprintable’.

Basically, imprinting occurs when the newborn gosling knows itself to be of the same species as the first creature it encounters. Obviously, this is usually the mother goose but if the newborn is adopted by a human soon after hatching, or else is found abandoned, it will attach itself to the adopter with incredible tenacity. The article below describes imprinting in more detail.

http://www.thegoosesmother.com/id6.html

When I first heard about imprinting and geese, I desperately wanted to do it (a lonely moment of madness perhaps?) and, yes, it certainly did happen with all of the goslings, even when we purchased them at a week old. For example, Pearl, Woodroffe and Diamond (our Sebastopol goslings), and Ola and Seli (our Pilgrim goslings) were, from the very beginning, very pattable, pick-up-able and needy of my presence in their lives.

They’re a little big now to pick up but they still follow me everywhere. The imprinting thing didn’t happen with Godfrey, the godfather of gandersom, because we got him at two years of age. He only follows me when he wants to get a bite out of my leg!

I love it!

 

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Paradoxitis

Paradoxitis: def. Being very happy and very sad at the same time.

A tentative mutual decision was made the other day about how best to manage Husband’s Parkinson’s disease. When Son was little, we all used to sing a variation of the song The two of us. We would press our three noses together and sing, “The three of us, we’ll always be together just the three of us, walking along, singing a song, lalala” at the top of our lungs. Now, for the three of us, this is no longer a physical possiblility as the room Husband is in at the nursing lodge has become available permanently.

When I got home from visiting him yesterday I was overwhelmed by an attack of paradoxitis so I went to get my camera and sat outside for awhile. I was in a bit of a daze and the camera fell off my lap and took a picture all by itself – of the way things are. The world has tilted.

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Why me?

I was just walking from the bank to MacDonalds with Son – a fairly regular and uneventful activity. This time, however, now that I am so bird-aware, I noticed how many seagulls were around, even though the beach is a few kilometres away.

I remarked to Son, “Look at all the seagulls!”

Son remarked to me, “Yes, they’re fascinating, aren’t they Mum,” his voice dripping.

Then, all of a sudden, a more significant drip dripped onto my head; a seagull’s poop had landed on my forehead. Oh, the horror of it!

Luckily, MacDonalds has a bathroom, so I raced in to wash the poop out of my hair, trying not to look like a character from Scream 1,2,3,4,5,  while Son, beside himself with laughter, ordered our burgers.

It should have been Son’s sarcastic head the seagull pooped on.

Why me?

ps. Sorry there isn’t a picture in this post but (a) I didn’t know this was going to happen; (b) I still haven’t found the zoom button on my new camera; and (c) a photo of seagull’s poop landing on some innocent woman’s head didn’t seem appropriate.

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Baby Turkey

The little beige turkey, ‘Baby Turkey’, who was the only survivor of the four we bought several weeks ago (fox got two and one got ill), has lost all his timidity and is now the boldest of all the turkeys. He is not as sweet as the Bubbles; actually, he’s not sweet at all and has a terrible temper. But he’s extremely clever and, even though he can fly, he actually likes to climb trees and ladders by hopping up from branch to branch, or rung to rung.

But Baby Turkey’s latest hobby is to perch on top of one of the chook houses and watch the emus in their yard. He doesn’t watch them with interest or awe or admiration – he watches them with extreme malevolence. I don’t know why he hates them so much but he does and the other day when I was taking the emus for a walk, he continually attacked them by flying up to their eye level and trying to claw them. This resulted in all of the Emerys zigzagging here there and everywhere in a panic, and made rounding them up a nightmare.

In the above photo you can see Baby Turkey in the background, aiming one of his evil eyes in the Emerys’ direction while they innocently munch their cabbage. And when I reprimand him by saying, sternly, “Stop that, Baby Turkey” I can see shivers creeping up the rather long spines of the emus, just at the mention of his name.

So we now have three birds who have anger issues: Godfrey the gander, Tina Turner the rooster and, now, Baby Turkey. I will have to put a sign at the front gate – Beware of the Birds.

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‘Duuuuuuh’ moments

This morning I took Son to an outdoor concert where he is helping set up for the various bands. He would love to be performing himself, but these are professional bands and Son is still a novice, having only done three gigs so far. I reckon he looks the part though!

When I dropped him off, I asked him if there might be a slight chance he could perform, he said, “Mum, I have already told you a million times – NO! Sometimes you are really slow on the uptake!” He then pointed to his own big head and twirled his fingers to indicate the ‘duuuuuh’ sign. Yes, well….

Then I went to pick Husband up from the nursing lodge, to come home for the day. I stopped at the town’s farmers’ market to buy some cabbages (I usually get around ten at a time) and lettuces. On my way through the checkout, the girl serving me asked, “Where is your restaurant?” which, because of my slow mental reflexes, I thought was rather a strange question until she pointed to the mountain of cabbages.

“Oh,” I said, “no, these are just for my birds.”

“How many chooks do you have?” she asked, interested.

“This is actually for the emus,” I said.

When she laughed her head off, I realized she thought I was joking but, because Husband was waiting in the car, I didn’t bother to clarify.

“About five chooks,” I said.

“Wow, they must eat a lot,” she said, still laughing.

Another ‘duuuh’ moment.

Husband’s reunion with home and the dogs was lovely. I let them inside for awhile. Don’t be fooled by Husband’s lack of expression; that’s just the Parkinson’s disease. Doc is the one on his lap and Jack is our Irish Terrier. Blaze (Doc’s son) tends to cower when he is excited, so he isn’t in the picture because he stayed under one of the chairs (he and Doc have a fractious father/son relationship).

And then, all of a sudden, before the kettle had even boiled, the power went off – and stayed off for a couple of hours. So, no television, no airconditioning (it’s over 30 degrees and humid today), no water, no telephone. I plugged in the old telephone that doesn’t rely on electricity and rang the power emergency line and was put on hold, hold, hold, until I gave up and went back into the sitting room with Husband who suggested we have a beer! Okay, so we did that, had a chat about the future and then I said, “Okay I’m going to ring them again now.”

“Why?” Husband asked.

“Because I’m sick of this!” I said, impatiently. “We need electricity – this is ridiculous, waiting all this time.”

“But it’s fine,” Husband said, a strange look on his face.

“What?” I said. “Wait, I can’t hear you; the television is too loud.”

And, bingo, that’s when I realized that the power had come back on during our serious talk about the future and I hadn’t even noticed.

We both cracked up laughing after which Husband said he needed to have a lie down (laughter can be exhausting!)

And I am still laughing while I am writing about my third ‘duuuh’ moment in a single day – argh!

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Eventually… magic!

Eventually, our two white peacocks will do this! At the moment, they are only teenagers so it might be another year or so before their tail feathers grow long enough for them to do this fantail thing. I can’t wait!

Magic!

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Romance

I am still watching those two loved-up peafowl. The white peahen has become rather a show off lately, so I’m worried that the peacock’s interest in her may have gone to her head because she keeps standing on the food box and pirouetting in front of all of the peacocks when really (and I’ve told her this!) she should be loyal to her first suitor.

For the sake of convenience, and clarity, I have decided to name them Brad and Angelina.

In the photo below you will see that Angelina is a little confused; she is in the middle, between two male white peacocks who both adore her but are beginning to tire of her antics.

And here we have Brad, being advised by one of Angie’s brothers to persevere because, ultimately, it will all be worth it.

Ahhhhh – romance … what would we do without its uncertainty, excitement, agony and joy? Mmmm – probably we’d all be calmer and wiser and very boring!

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Son feeds the birds!

Son and I got home this afternoon from a 5-hour round trip to Perth and back and, despite his disapproval of my ‘bird thing’, Son fed the gang and didn’t mind at all!

‘We should have more moments like this, Mum,’ he said.

Long story short: I know the photos don’t reveal it, but Son has a 75% scoliosis with surgery scheduled for 14 February.

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Birdplay

I love watching the birds at play. Even though they spend most of their time pecking around for food – grass, grubs and so on, each breed has its own version of fun:

The guinnea fowl love to dig themselves into any grassless patches and roll around in the dirt. They have also formed a choir and their performances are frequent (about once every hour or so). Their music is a bit of an acquired taste which visitors often refer to as ‘noise’ but we are used to its strange echoes.

The peacocks, of course, love to dance the ‘fantail’. Now, even though it’s only the males who do this, the females find it enormously entertaining (occasionally!) They also play a game called ‘scare-the-hell-out-of-Julie’ which consists of blood-curdling screams which never fail to stop me in my tracks, as they are so piercing.

The chooks love to play hide and seek in amongst the bits and pieces of farm debris. The hens are particularly good at hiding which is probably because they don’t like the roosters’ idea of play which I think is better left undescribed here.

The turkeys love a game called ‘peck-the-duck-until-it-wakes-up’. Even though the following picture is of one of the Bubbles (turkey) and Tapper (duck) when they were young, they still play this game with varying degrees of success.

The golden pheasants used to play a war game that turned out to be not a game at all but a war, with the loser banished to an adjacent property and the winner remaining here, victorious and splendid. And lonely. War games are no longer encouraged here.

The Indian runner ducks love to run around, pretending to be fast and, yes, before they met the emus, they thought they were fast. Unfortunately for the Indian runners, most of the timed races have been won by the Emerys, but the ducks are very dignified losers. The Emerys do concede, however, that they have the distinct advantage of loooooooooooooonger legs!

The best game of all here is waterplay and, since the following photo was taken, we have added a pond so that it isn’t just Godfrey who gets to play.

Oh, I nearly forgot – Buttons, the weiro, likes to boogie on my shoulder. He seems to be able to turn his head all the way around, then does this nodding thing really fast, then he shakes himself, then the whole dance move repeats itself. Since he is on my shoulder more than he is off my shoulder lately, this means that I am constantly covered in a sprinkling of tiny feathers that look like dandruff, as well as, you know, weiro waste (the excitement of the boogie seems to affect his little bowel – oh well!)

The following youtube of a crow snowboarding is accompanied by a rather serious little article about whether birds like to play in the same way humans do. I don’t think it matters.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/thoughtful-animal/2012/01/16/snowboarding-crows-the-plot-thickens/

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