Have a look at this clip of an eagle owl flying towards a camera at 1000 frames per second.
It is WONDERFUL!
PS. Just after posting this, I decided to watch the clip again. Unfortunately I had Buttons, the weiro, on my shoulder and she couldn’t take her eyes off the screen. The poor thing got such a shock, all her chirps have been swallowed up by terror!
I don’t know why.
I don’t clip the birds’ wings, despite the risks.
And, now that his wings have grown back, he wants to fly away as far as possible because he is sick of this rancid nest, plus I keep forgetting to feed him his mealworms!
He will forgive me I hope.
I will never clip his wings again.
Birds seem to like perching on human shoulders. This photo of Woodroffe (gosling) was taken just before he scrambled up to my shoulder and pooped. Unlike the ducklings, he did this silently, so it wasn’t until I went to the local shop and bumped into a friend who said, “what’s that on your shoulder?” that I realised I had a rather large mound of greenish substance on my collar and leaking into my neck (I thought I was just sweating; well, it was a hot morning).
You do know, don’t you (no, you probably don’t, and that’s okay) that you can now purchase nappies/diapers for poultry. And, yes, when Woody was little, I contemplated nappying him with the lovely pink and white chook nappies I had bought online.
Why? That is a very good question. I suppose, initially, having read about imprinting (the details of which I will save for another post), I thought Woody might turn into the second child I never had – don’t worry, I didn’t want a second child anyway.
The nappies weren’t terribly complicated, although there did seem to be a lot of safety pins, and the instruction sheet, which consisted of a diagramatic series of steps, was a little difficult to de-code for a novice. So I gave up and decided to put Woody back outside with the rest of the gang. I think he was relieved; I know I was.
If, a few months ago, someone told me that they had a pet chook/goose/duck who lived in the house with them I would have been intrigued and, yes, amused. I would have thought this someone and his/her ‘pet’ were both extremely weird and I would probably have decided to gradually ease away from my friendship with this someone.
Now, however, I do ‘get it’, but I just don’t want to do it because, unless the chook/goose/duck wants to come into the house, I don’t see any point when they are all happy outside anyway.
Apparently, unlike dogs and cats, you cannot house-train poultry because they have no control over their sphincters. You see, I have done my research here!
Woody didn’t like that nappy idea anyway and I don’t blame him. I think he thought it was all a bit peculiar. I do hope he didn’t tell the others!
Anyway, chook nappies aside, I have now exchanged my white shirts for green ones at the local second-hand shop. I had washed them first, of course, but unfortunately the shoulder stains were still there. I’m not quite sure why, but the woman who served me didn’t want to know the details.
Lately, because it is the pre-summer season of the easterly winds, I have been fascinated to watch the wild birds here (many of them very tiny breeds) fly into, or against, the wind. Sometimes it looks as if they are simply standing still, high up in the air, fixed into the sky, surreal. Then, all of a sudden, they will sort of dive down, or arrow up, defying the wind and landing in the trees, trembling and triumphant.
When I was six, I wrote my first song and I still remember the tune, although I don’t remember the lyrics beyond line 2. It went like this:
My little bird flies in the sky
He’s never afraid of the wind
Of course I soon became famous (NOT!)
Anyway, I remember singing it to my parents and their pride in my trilling was reward enough. I also remember my little brothers grimacing. Brother 1 (four years old) was already very good at mockery, and Brother 2 (two years old) just seemed bemused; I think he was too busy stuffing a whole banana into his mouth, something he was very good at.
If Son were to know that, in my heart, he is that little bird, he would probably throw up [please let him have unsubscribed by now!] but I quite like testing the limits of his love-endurance, and my own sentimentality makes us all laugh!
However, I do like the idea, in that second line of my childhood song, about not being afraid of the wind. There is always wind and there is always fear, but one of the things I most admire about Son is his ability to ‘fly’ against and into the wind despite the risks involved in not quite conforming, of not allowing himself to become a 17-year-old caricature of a 17-year-old caricature.
So this is my new song:
Caught in a sliver of moment
A half grin
A near wink
The camera brings his soul into his face before he escapes….
Country boy
Gentleman
Renegade
Party animal
My son
Flying into the wind….
If you are 50-ish, like I am, you will remember this song, this movie, this era.
If you are younger, then you are in for a treat… I hope!
Diamond: Hey, Woody, I think I found a wing. Can we Sebastopols fly?
Woodroffe: No, we can’t fly and what the hell are you doing now, Di? Oh, I can’t look – you are so embarrassing.
Diamond: I think I found my genitals and I might not be a girl after all.
Woodroffe: How thrilling. So what would you like me to call you now – Dick?
Dick: Why do you always have to be so sarcastic, Woody?
I’m a little perturbed, on the white peacocks’ behalf, that the post about them [16th Nov.] seemed to go unnoticed.
They are not used to this lack of ‘ooh/aaah’ attention.
I don’t understand their attention-seeking behaviour, but I do have a grudging respect for their vanity.
Hence this second post in one day – silly really, but I think they were a little hurt by the lack of commentary.
I have asked Son to unsubscribe from my blog for three reasons:
1. He gets a bit freaked out reading about himself, especially if my anecdotes aren’t 110% literal;
2. He is irritated by the daily emails alerting him to my posts (lots of people probably are!); and
3. I don’t want him to know about the six emu chicks I’ve ordered.
I’m not sure if he’s unsubscribed yet and if I mention it again he might get suspicious, so I am just hoping that he will delete the email connecting him to this post.
The six new Emerys arrive in two weeks!
This picture was taken a few weeks ago and I’m very glad I took a few shots like this because all four of these goslings are now HUGE! I have never known anything to grow as fast as a goose (well, except maybe a miniature pig – see previous posts.)
The first time I heard the sound I was outside the front of the house, getting firewood. I thought it was a roll of thunder but when I looked up, the sky was clear, so I realised it must be Son on his drums.
That is until they came around the corner – six geese at full speed, their huge webbed feet slapping the ground into a primeval beat. When they spotted me, their stampede became more frenzied until they reached me and I told them I’d run out of lettuce.
Disappointed, they waddled quietly away.
Note: ‘the patter of little feet’ quote comes from the following poem:
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Children’s Hour“
Between the dark and the daylight, When the night is beginning to lower, Comes a pause in the day’s occupations, That is known as the Children’s Hour.
I hear in the chamber above me The patter of little feet, The sound of a door that is opened, And voices soft and sweet.
http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/longfellow/thechildren.shtml
Most people who keep backyard chickens do so in order to provide themselves with a supply of eggs. But when we first acquired a few chooks, I was so enamoured with their personalities and fascinated by the fact that they were so tameable, that I forgot about the egg thing.
Yes, I had set up nesting boxes and bought a little chookhouse but I was so fond of picking the chickens up and giving them hugs that I didn’t care if they laid eggs or not. Occasionally, out of curiosity, I would look inside the nesting boxes but there were never any eggs anyway.
Then, one day I found a dozen eggs inside an old crate at the back of our garage. They were huge and I knew they must have come from our one and only Isa Brown hen. I was thrilled and we ate them over the next few days – delicious!
But she never laid any eggs there again. In fact I have no idea where she lays her eggs and I can’t follow her around 24/7 can I. Now, since chickens average an egg per day, this means that, having had Isa for around six months now, there must be a couple of hundred eggs … somewhere!
But where? Even she can’t find them!
jmgoyder 