jmgoyder

wings and things

Jul 8

Six new chooks!

by jmgoyder

In the interests of equalizing the male/female ratio here, I have now purchased six pullets (‘teenage’ hens about to lay eggs) and have confined them to the original chook pen where they are adjusting with a mixture of trepidation and delight. Surrounded by peafowl and guinnea fowl – who fly in and out of the pen whenever they feel like it – the six new chooks are experiencing a kind of culture shock I guess. All four roosters are not allowed into the pen yet so they cockadoodledoo outside the pen constantly but they don’t seem particularly amorous, more curious – maybe even alarmed.

One of my BFFs (being acronymically challenged, I didn’t even know what this meant until last week) helped me pick the new chooks up and gave me some chook advice, as she has had chooks for years.

Daffy wants to join the newbies since Dotty, his ‘wife’ seems to have disappeared. I suspect she is sitting on eggs somewhere but have not been able to find her and Daffy quacks all day for her – his loneliness is gutwrenching. I hope she hasn’t been taken by that fox.

So – another new poultry mini-chapter. Let’s hope it all works out because I want eggs again!

Wings

24 Comments »
May 30

“Look at me!”

by jmgoyder

Animal Family Wings

33 Comments »
May 19

Wrong way. Go back.

by jmgoyder

In Western Australia we have big signs wherever roadworks are being done in case people go the wrong way. This can be useful, but it can also be a bit confusing.

It’s a little bit like that with blogging because you get really curious to go down a certain blog path, you like what you are reading/seeing, but you are also uncertain of where exactly you are and sometimes the historical context of where you are, in that person’s blog, takes quite a bit of time, quite a bit of deciphering.

With my own blog, Wings and things, it’s obviously the same experience for new readers or followers because, of course, the latest post is always the most recent and, unless people  have time to go back, they might not ‘get it’ that there are two different-but-same stories running parallel. The Love story is about the past but everything else is about the present.

As many of you already know, my husband has chronic Parkinson’s disease and terminal prostate cancer and is now in a nursing lodge close by. Our 18-year-old son recently had major spinal surgery. And me – I love birds!

I can’t keep up with the many blogs I am interested in, no matter how hard I try, but one thing I like to do is to go back and read the very beginnings of those blogs which is what I hope people will do with mine. It’s not that there is a wrong or a right way necessarily, but going back can be fantastic!

Oh yeah, and if you go back, you will find that I don’t usually do 4 posts in the day. I cheated today with the pics – hehe!

blogging Family Friendship LOVE STORY Wings

14 Comments »
May 14

An over-abundance of masculinity

by jmgoyder

I just figured out why there is suddenly so much squabbling amongst our birds; there are too many males! I decided to do a count today and here are the statistics:

  • four roosters (no hens);
  • one golden pheasant (no females);
  • ten peacocks (five peahens);
  • two drakes (two ducks);
  • five ganders (two geese);
  • one emu (two emuettes);
  • two turkey toms (one female); and
  • one weiro.

The fact that we also have two male alpacas and two male dogs means that, if you include Son and me in the equation, and not counting the twelve gender-defying guinnea fowl, we roughly have a ratio of 3 to 1 in favour of the male presence here. It is definitely time to get some more hens!

I figure if there is more of a female presence here, Godfrey will stop trying to lord it over me!

Note: We did have a lot of hens but the fox got them so now I have a better yard, with higher fences. I hope this works!

Wings

34 Comments »
Apr 30

Tina Turner

by jmgoyder

Husband has always adored Tina Turner and that song, “We don’t need another hero!” It’s easy to find on youtube but here is one link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1FPK5-Rm38

I hope the real Tina Turner doesn’t mind that we named a rooster (who we thought was a hen) after her, but the resemblance was uncanny and our Tina has the very same feistiness!

I rang Husband in the nursing lodge a moment ago and asked him to confirm that it was the Tina Turner song, “We don’t need another hero” that he loved so much. I even sang a bit of it on the phone which made us both laugh. He said yes.

Here are the lyrics to this famous song:“We Don’t Need Another Hero”

OUT OF THE RUINS OUT FROM THE WRECKAGE CAN`T MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE THIS TIME WE ARE THE CHILDREN THE LAST GENERATION WE ARE THE ONES THEY LEFT BEHIND AND I WONDER WHEN WE ARE EVER GONNA CHANGE LIVING UNDER THE FEAR, TILL NOTHING ELSE REMAINS
WE DON`T NEED ANOTHER HERO WE DON`T NEED TO KNOW THE WAY HOME ALL WE WANT IS LIFE BEYOND THUNDERDOME
LOOKING FOR SOMETHING WE CAN RELY ON THERE`S GOTTA BE SOMETHING BETTER OUT THERE LOVE AND COMPASSION THEIR DAY IS COMING ALL ELSE ARE CASTLES BUILT IN THE AIR AND I WONDER WHEN WE ARE EVER GONNA CHANGE LIVING UNDER THE FEAR TILL NOTHING ELSE REMAINS
ALL THE CHILDREN SAY WE DON`T NEED ANOTHER HERO WE DON`T NEED TO KNOW THE WAY HOME ALL WE WANT IS LIFE BEYOND THUNDERDOME
SO WHAT DO WE DO WITH OUR LIFES WE LEAVE ONLY A MARK WILL OUR STORY SHINE LIKE A LIGHT OR END IN THE DARK GIVE IT ALL OR NOTHING
WE DON`T NEED ANOTHER HERO WE DON`T NEED TO KNOW THE WAY HOME ALL WE WANT IS LIFE BEYOND THUNDERDOME
I quite like the way my copy/paste of the above lyrics has accidentally crammed them altogether into a single wordy crush of feeling – a single paragraph and decades of meaning….
Thank you, Tina Turner.

Uncategorized Wings

40 Comments »
Mar 31

Hints of harmony

by jmgoyder

I hesitate to speak too soon, but it looks like my patience has paid off and familiarity has bred harmony rather than contempt when it comes to interactions between our dogs and our birds.

This morning we let the dogs out of their yard and kept the gang in theirs (we usually do the opposite). I sat outside and kept watch because even though the geese, ducks and emus were safely in their own yards, all of the other birds were out and about because they can fly. So the peafowl, guinnea fowl, turkeys, chooks and pheasant, were all roaming around freely and seemingly unafraid of the dogs who they usually only see through a fence. I was particularly worried about the chooks but so far so good and I’ve been able to come inside.

Here is Jack, the Irish Terrier, with the Bubbles and Baby Turkey. Now Jack, who is less than a year old, has never exhibited any ferocious hunting tendencies anyway, but he does like to chase things. In this sense, he and Baby Turkey have a lot in common so you could say they have both met their match and the chasing has stopped.

Interestingly, Doc and Blaze (our father and son miniature dachschunds) are so busy fighting each other at the moment that neither has attempted to hunt down any of the birds. I’m not sure what is going on with those two but lately they never stop arguing and last night Doc gave Blaze a nasty bite on the ear when Son was feeding them. Doc is very jealous when it comes to our attention so poor Blaze has to constantly defer to his father and stand back.

Another harmony challenge has been the introduction of a new gander to the gang. He was delivered to us by a neighbour the other day because he had lost his mate and was very lonely. The poor guy is quite scared of Godfrey’s gang and yesterday, when Son and I got back from Perth, we found him all alone by the gate and had to ‘herd’ him back to the gang and put them all in the same pen. We are calling him Leroy and hoping that with enough time in the yard with the others, he will eventually make a friend and be okay. Son says it reminds him of being ‘the new kid’ at school. The following photo is not a good one but it does show this new kid’s challenge. Leroy is on the right, Seli is on the left and Godfrey is in the background (as always!) Sometimes redeye isn’t a bad effect!

In a couple of hours I pick Husband up for the weekend so I better go and hose down the area outside the back door which all our birds seem to think is the toilet – arghh!

Animal Wings

30 Comments »
Mar 7

Eggs

by jmgoyder

Angelina: What are these things?

Phoenix 1: I’m not sure, but they look rather delicious.

Queenie: They’re chicken eggs, you morons. Well, I think they are … they dropped out of the woman’s bag of cabbage. Don’t touch them – they could be from the shop!

Tapper: How do you know they’re not duck eggs?

Wings

10 Comments »
Jan 26

Little Chooks 1 and 2

by jmgoyder

Little Chooks 1 and 2, our two identical Araucana hens, went missing weeks ago and, even though I thought that the fox might have nabbed them, I hoped they were sitting on eggs somewhere.

So, you can imagine my relief when Son told me he’d seen one of them emerge, rather bedraggled, from underneath one of the sheds, the other afternoon. This means that she is definitely sitting on eggs deep under that shed and, hopefully, we’ll soon see some offspring.

I haven’t seen either of the Little Chooks myself, and it isn’t the same shed as the one where Sussex and Malay produced their chicks (see a previous post). With them, we could at least see underneath the shed and watch the progress, leave water and food etc. The shed that Little Chooks have chosen is impenetrable, so I will just have to wait and hope.

Hope can be risky.

Wings

10 Comments »
Jan 19

Birdplay

by jmgoyder

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/

Wings

12 Comments »
Jan 11

Down the rabbit hole

by jmgoyder

Yesterday, in the early evening after all the birds were safely in their yards, I decided to take some photos of the rabbits. Oh yes, haven’t I mentioned them before? We have hundreds of rabbits – well, perhaps not quite hundreds, but lots and lots – so many, in fact, that a friend from Perth asked if I was breeding them. No, I am not breeding them; they are doing that extraordinarily well all by themselves.

In other words, we have a rabbit plague.

They are everywhere! At any time of the day or evening, I can look through any window, or go outside, and I will see not just one or two rabbits, but entire families scampering around, here there and everywhere, in amongst the peacocks and guinneas and geese and ducks and chickens and turkeys. The scene resembles something rather heavenly except it is not heavenly because those rabbits are digging up the foundations of every building on the farm – that is five sheds and this house! I keep expecting the house to suddenly tip over. After all, it’s a very old house.

So last evening I sat outside, camera ready and waited. And waited. And waited. And I didn’t see one rabbit – not even a bunny! It was as if, like Alice in Wonderland, I had fallen down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world – this one devoid of rabbits. I wish.

Anyway, I thought I better take a picture of something, so I took one of the feathers on the lawn. In a previous post I mentioned that, with all the birds molting, it looks a bit like it has been snowing. Then I took a picture of King peacock’s final feather. As I said in another previous post he’s been hanging onto that last symbol of his former glory for ages. Now, having shed that final tail feather he will have to wait several months for them to all grow back. Poor guy seems a bit lost now.

I was still waiting for a rabbit or two to appear so I took another couple of photos of feathers that had blown into a blossom tree. I say a blossom tree because I’ve forgotten what kind of tree this is and Husband isn’t here to enlighten me (I’m ashamed to say that after nearly 20 years of marriage and living here, I still don’t know what many of these trees and flowers are!)

Actually, I’m not comfortable with the little white lie I just told about the feathers in the tree. They were in the tree earlier in the day but had blown onto the ground again, so I put them back in the tree to take the photos. Is that false photography? Interesting concept!

I am not, however, white-lying about the rabbits. The weird thing is that I haven’t seen any today either, so far.

Perhaps I’ve magicked them away somehow. On the other hand, the house does feel a little tilted today!

Or maybe I’m just stuck inside a ‘Julie in Wonderland’ rabbit hole.

When I go in to see Husband today, I will ask him what the blossom tree is called. He will know.

Animal Uncategorized Wings

12 Comments »
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