jmgoyder

wings and things

Dec 16

Cockatoo eats Ab swing

by jmgoyder

The most wonderful thing is happening! Every day, Wantok is eating, mutilating and destroying a little bit more of my Ab swing (you know those exercise machines that are supposed to give you a flat stomach in a few days).

Okay, I bought this Ab swing thing a couple of years ago but it hasn’t worked. Apparently, according to the instructions, you have to use it for it to work and, even though I’ve used it quite a bit in my imagination, I still haven’t actually climbed onto it and done what the flat-stomached young woman in the dvd does.

So the fact that Wantok is destroying it is a bit of a guilty relief. She’s nearly finished with the handles and the foot bits of this contraption (which are rubber) and now she has begun on the steel base. She should have it completely obliterated by New Year’s Eve which will be great because then I won’t have to make that particular resolution again – yeeha!

Oh, Wantok, how I love you! Do you know, she even has Buttons chomping away at the more easily destroyable bits of the Ab swing. They are such a great team!

Wings

10 Comments »
Dec 16

The chickens grow up

by jmgoyder

This is a picture of two of the first ever chickens to be born here. On the right is the mother of one of them, Sussex (named after her breed). Several posts ago I told the story of how Sussex, who raised all three chickens under an old shed, suddenly became very distressed one day because she couldn’t find them. Then, the next day, we discovered that another hen, Malay (again, named after her breed), had ‘adopted’ them. Well, I think it’s pretty obvious now that they each hand a ‘hand’ in the motherhood stakes because one is identical to Sussex and the other two are identical to Malay.

They are feisty little chickens having been brought up entirely by both mothers with no human interference. I wanted to interfere and several people suggested I should put them in a brooder in the house with a heat lamp or they might not survive. Then one friend said, “What do you think chickens did before we domesticated them, hmmm?” Point taken!

Wings

4 Comments »
Dec 15

Seeing

by jmgoyder

Until the birds, I never used to see anything beyond my job as a university lecturer, the Husband and Son, and my own navel (not necessarily in that order!)

Now, I have begun to see in a new way. Here are some pictures that ‘describe’ how an unobservant person like me has had her eyes opened.

Oh, just in case you’re wondering, one of the pictures is of a strange new bird we have recently discovered dancing around the place. I don’t really want to shoo him away but I might have to!

Animal Wings

13 Comments »
Dec 15

Emu farm

by jmgoyder

The emu breeder, Kip Venn, who delivered our new Emerys the other day, has given me permission to provide the following link to his website: http://www.emufarm.iinet.net.au/ Here is one of my favourite pictures from this website …

Kip gave me some very good advice and that was to spend as much time as possible with the new emus until they get used to the strangeness of human proximity, so I’ve been doing that and two of the emus will now allow me to pat them if I have a bit of food in my hand. I sit on an old tractor tyre and the biggest emu will run up to me, stare at me as if I am some sort of peculiar object, then take a bit of cabbage out of my hand, but if I say ‘hello’ – even if I say it really softly – he sprints off as if there has been an explosion!

Anyway, they are all settling in well, the only drawback being that during the evenings, nights and early mornings, they are ‘next door’ to the gang and Godfrey keeps poking his substantial beak, bill or whatever it is – I think of it as a ‘nose-in-the-air’ nose – through the fence that separates them and hissing.

Conversely, the Emerys are gentle, shy, unassuming and adorable! And it is comforting to know that when I turn my back, unlike Godfrey, they will not bite me on the bum!

Wings

4 Comments »
Dec 14

If you love something….

by jmgoyder

Richard Bach (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Bach), author of Johnathon Livingstone Seagull, once said, “If you love something, set it free; if it comes backs it’s yours, if it doesn’t, it never was”, a quote which is now widely used in various contexts, and a quote that I have always associated with birds and wings and gutsy metaphor.

Tomorrow I have to take Husband up to a hospital in Perth where his condition and medications can be reassessed by his Parkinson’s disease specialist. This will be his fourth visit to this hospital; nevertheless it is always traumatic for both of us because it usually means a stay of around 4-5 days and I have to come home again and leave him there. The geographical distance is only 200 kilometres but it may as well be 20,000 – well, that’s how it feels.

When I first met Husband, I was 18 and he was 41. I had come to look after his mother who had recently broken her hip. It was my first job. For me it was love at first sight; for him, I was just a strange kid. Oh how I loved him! But it wasn’t reciprocated, so I had to do that ‘letting go’ thing. Once I grew up a bit, he fell in love too but it took awhile (just a few years, like a decade – no big deal, ha!)

So, happy ending in many ways – mutual adoration, a beautiful son a year after we were married … and then Husband got kidney cancer. That was the first illness, but it has been followed by a succession, all of which Husband has overcome or, at least, been resilient against. But then Parkinson’s disease took over our lives.

I cannot let him go; I cannot set him free; I wish he would come back.

And he will. While he is in hospital, Son and I will get the Christmas tree up and decorated and wrap Husband’s present. You’ll never guess what it is – it’s a cuckoo clock!

Wings

18 Comments »
Dec 14

Has anyone seen my boots?

by jmgoyder

Wantok, our red-tailed black cockatoo, is literally eating the house. Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration but let’s put it this way: she has taken a bite out of every single biteable object in our veranda – every chair, every shoe, every everything!

These were once my favourite boots! They were quite worn out anyway but they were wearable. Oh, she acts all innocent if I approach her. In fact right now, I am watching her from my office at the other end of the veranda and she is chewing the less damaged boot but twice now I have tried to take a photo of her in the act and she steps aside as if to say, ‘it wasn’t me!’

During her first week with us she chewed through three of her wooden perches after which I left her cage door open and now she won’t go back in there; the veranda has become her domain and she sleeps on top of her cage rather than inside it. I suppose it must be rather wonderful having this kind of freedom as, before we acquired her, she had never been outside a cage.

When Husband, his mother and brother first moved here some half century ago, one of the first things they did was to enclose this back veranda with windows so it is a perfect place for Wantok because the windows make it feel like outside but she is safe. The drawback for us, though, is that she is making one hell of a mess, so we are now considering an aviary after all. It’ll have to be a huge one though, to match the size of this veranda, but that way she will be outside (which I’m sure she’d prefer) and we will get our veranda back. I’m not sure; ideally I want to let Wantok out so she can fly more freely, but I’m afraid she might fly away. I have ordered a mate for her but he won’t arrive until March next year.

Any advice appreciated.

Or boot donations!

Wings

6 Comments »
Dec 13

Eye kisses

by jmgoyder

Buttons (our weiro) and I just watched the following youtube of Snoopy and Woodstock, then we looked at each other, amazed. I could see her thinking – yes thinking – ‘wow, that’s just like us!’ Buttons definitely had an expression of incredulity in her eyes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTssF_NYusQ

Speaking of eyes, after watching the clip, she did this eye kiss thing with me; she puts her face up against mine, then stretches up until her eyes and mine are almost touching, then she sort of brushes my eyelashes with her little beak very gently. The first time she did this was a bit nerve-wracking because, even though it’s just a little beak, it’s still a beak!

Every morning, Buttons lets out a kind of wolf whistle sound until I open her cage and let her out. Then she does exactly what Woodstock does in the youtube; she flies to me, sometimes miscalculating the distance between her cage, at one end of the veranda, and my office, which is at the other end, and crash lands here and there en route. She’s getting really good at it now though – often she makes it all the way to my shoulder.

Like Snoopy, I sometimes tire of her attention – and the constant eye kisses – and put her back on top of her cage but she keeps coming back! Here she is sitting just outside my office, waiting for me to call her!

Wings

14 Comments »
Dec 12

‘You’ve got to pick a pocket or two….’

by jmgoyder

The quote, in case you don’t remember or realise, is from Oliver – oh how I loved that movie!

Ever since we started accumulating a few (just a few!) birds I have gotten into the habit of always having bits of bread and lettuce in my back pockets and it didn’t take long for the gang to realise this. As a result, even after I have given them their morning treats, they pick and peck at my pockets relentlessy, so much so that most of my clothes are now full of holes.

This picture of Ola (Pilgrim goose on the left) and Zaruma (Muscovy duck) is the best I can do to show you what I’m talking about (as it’s difficult to take a picture of your own back pockets!) Ola is pecking at my trousers and Zaruma is heading towards my back pockets where Ola soon joins him.

Wings

4 Comments »
Dec 12

The Bubbles grow up

by jmgoyder

Remember how we lost our first turkey, Bubble, then replaced her with four more Bubbles?  Well, here is one of them (the cheekiest by far). He is big but he will get much bigger. I know because I saw his parents and they were gigantic and the dad was magnificent.

He is the only one who hops right up on the picnic table where I give the gang their morning treats (bread and lettuce). In fact, once I let them out of the yard, he flies straight to the table and waits patiently. He lets me pat him and tickle him under his chin (it’s interesting to get such a close-up look at where the expression ‘turkey neck’ comes from!)

But we still miss our original Bubble….

Wings

2 Comments »
Dec 11

Willy wagtails barricade wash-house

by jmgoyder

There are two things I need to define here; firstly, what is a willy wagtail? The link below will provide you with some information:

http://birdsinbackyards.net/species/Rhipidura-leucophrys

The second thing to define is wash-house. Don’t worry, I didn’t know what a wash-house was either once upon a time. The best way to define this phenomenon is to simply describe our wash-house. Okay, from a distance, it looks a bit like a cute little chalet adjacent to the main house. In reality, however, this is a small octogenarian shed which houses a washing machine, a couple of sinks, an old copper and a multiplicity of junk, some of which Husband assures me could be valuable and probably is. The only trouble is that I wouldn’t have a clue what these objects of antique art actually are; the only thing I recognise is a screwdriver which doesn’t actually cooperate the way screwdrivers should when you really need them so it, like other tooly objects, sits in one of the many piles, waiting in vain hope to be rescued by Sothebys.

I have become so used to doing the washing in these somewhat primitive conditions that it doesn’t bother me in the least, except in Spring when the willy wagtails build their nests. They build these nests everywhere of course but the most elaborate of these is the one in the wash-house. Every year there is a nest, eggs, babies and so on and, despite the fact that I love all of that, those willy wagtail parents give me hell when I am trying to do the washing.

You see, they screech, then dive bomb me and, even though they are so tiny, they are very good at head-butting and (I know this is going to sound ridiculous), I am terrified of them!

Hence, I am very much behind with the washing. I mean this is one hell of a scary looking bird, wouldn’t you agree?

Wings

11 Comments »
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