jmgoyder

wings and things

Dec 25

Not for Christmas lunch!

by jmgoyder

Ever since we began accumulating birds, specifically poultry, friends and family have joked about us having a very handy source of food. Recently, one friend even had the affrontery to suggest that they would all be suitable for Christmas lunch, so I had to become rather stern with her.

“None of these birds are food,” I said, picking Zaruma (a duck) up and stroking his substantial chest. We were sitting opposite each other, outside at one of the picnic tables. “They’re our friends.”

As if to confirm this, one of the Bubbles (a turkey) flew up onto the table and nuzzled me.

“Oh,” she said, “I just thought with so many….”

I noticed that Godfrey (a gander) was approaching her from behind, poised to bite her bum. After all she was sitting where I usually sit and that’s where he sometimes catches me off guard.

I couldn’t help thinking how a little nip from Godfrey might teach my friend a lesson, after her tactless remark. She didn’t hear his warning hiss because we were surrounded by chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys and peacocks, all squawking and squabbling for bread, lettuce, cabbage and my attention.

“Anyway,” I said to her pointedly, as Godfrey got closer. “They’re all such gentle creatures.” And, whammo, right on cue, Godfrey lunged in and bit her on her subtantial posterior. Well, she leapt up with a shriek of horror, whirled around then shrieked even louder to see Godfrey’s hissing, angry face.

“Why didn’t you warn me?” she yelled, backing away from Godfrey, terrified.

“My goodness, I didn’t see that coming!” I said, feigning innocence. I was trying really hard to keep a straight face but I just couldn’t and broke into laughter. “I guess it’s just that he doesn’t particularly like hearing about the idea of being eaten.”

Unfortunately, my friend and I are no longer quite as close as we used to be.

Wings

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Dec 21

‘Alone again, naturally’

by jmgoyder

The title of this post derives from the Gilbert O’Sullivan song of the 1960s and reminds me that, no matter how many people surround us, we are, fundamentally, alone. For some this is terrifying; for others (like me!) it is refreshing; for all of us, it is a reality. We are alone in the birth canal and in the death canal and that is a fact.

I have noticed, over the last several months, that if a bird has been injured, all of the other birds will leave it alone. There seems to be this instinctive compulsion in birds, and perhaps in many other animals, to get as far away as possible from the suffering or dying of their breed. Actually, it’s possibly more of a revulsion or a fear thing – I’m not sure.

We humans, on the other hand, sometimes feel as if we are supposed to gather around the injured or stricken of our breed, to empathize and commiserate, when what we really want to do is fly away. But we are good at pretending. Birds, on the other hand, don’t pretend, and I admire this unwitting honesty, this commonsense ….

…. this conundrum!

This chook is gone now and I will miss her so much.

Uncategorized Wings

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Dec 20

The frantic fluttering of wings

by jmgoyder

In the life-death-life-death-life cycle of birds I have now seen it all, had my heart  broken then re-put-together, and dealt swiftly with the kind of suffering that is evidenced by the frantic fluttering of wings. As you know, we have a fox problem; in fact this whole district has a fox problem, but I didn’t realise how much of a problem this was until we suffered our first casualties (this was before we lost our first emus).

It was months ago now, back at the beginning of our bird adventure and I will never forget that morning.

It was very early and the sun was just crawling out from behind a cloud when I heard a dreadful chorus of squawking and quacking, so I leapt out of bed and ran out of the house to the back yard and, only metres away, there was a fox with one of our male Indian runner ducks in its jaws. I shrieked and ran towards it and it let the duck go and ran away and, thankfully, the duck survived.

I called all of the birds – and gradually, silently, the chickens who hadn’t been killed came towards me. I have a food bin out the back, so I got some bread and they livened up a bit but, when I did a head count, I only counted six when there should have been 12. And I couldn’t find our two roosters. Then, I realised that the Indian runner I had saved, was all alone; his female mate was gone too.

There were feathers everywhere, but no bodies, and I learned later that foxes (specifically vixens feeding their cubs), bury or hide what they kill for a later food source. But that morning, not knowing what I know now, I sat down on the ground and cried while I fed little bits of bread to the survivors.  There was an eerie silence and I looked up into the wattle trees to see that all of the peafowl and guinnea fowl were still there, staring down, scared and quiet.

I stopped crying and called up, “It’s okay, you can come down now; the fox is gone,” and, one by one, they vacated their branches to land softly near me and to share the bread with others.

Wings

13 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 9

When are we going to get a proper pond?

by jmgoyder

In the picture on the left, you see Pearl (Sebastopol) and Seli (Pilgrim) having a ‘swim’. In the picture on the right, Diamond has hopped in and there is now a queue – oh, that’s Woodroffe in the forefront by the way.

As you can see, the babies are all grown up now and the shell pools are a little inadequate! I didn’t want to get a proper pond too soon because I was told by one of the breeders that ducklings and goslings can easily drown, and obviously baby chickens and turkeys are even more at risk.

But finally, now that they’re so BIG, we’ve put the first pond in (I can see we are going to need a few of these!) and they are delighted, I think, although a little hesitant as you can see!

The funny thing is that when I lock them in the yards in the early evening (to keep them safe from the foxes), they still love to squish up together in the shell pools. So I still empty and refill these for them constantly, which sometimes seems a little futile as these tiny pools immediately becomes filthy again. But they don’t seem to mind; in fact they seem to find muddy water much more interesting than clean water – more bugs I guess.

The picture below is to remind you of what they used to look like, not that long ago! If I had known they were going to grow up so fast, I would have savoured these childhood moments more. That reminds me, Son graduated from high school this week. I wonder if he is going to require a bigger pond too – mmm?

Wings

6 Comments »
Dec 7

Do you have a spare nappy?

by jmgoyder

A few posts ago, I mentioned the newish trend of putting nappies, or diapers, on pet birds. Well, that elicited a fair bit of curiousity from readers, so here is the link to the blog of one of the companies who sells these extraordinary inventions:

http://www.flightquarters.com/blog/?p=264

As you will see, it isn’t just nappies this company specializes in. So, even though I have decided not to do the nappy thing with Woodroffe, the gosling, I am still quite keen on the flightsuit for Wantok, the cockatoo! What colour do you think she’d like?

Wings

5 Comments »
Nov 28

Has anyone seen my eggs?

by jmgoyder

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!

Wings

16 Comments »
Nov 14

Lost and found!

by jmgoyder

When I went out this morning to feed the chooks I found Sussex (minus her chicks) happily frolicking with the other chooks, which surprised me. Neverthless I was happy that she had recovered from her grief so quickly. I was sitting in my usual place on a log, feeding out the scraps when, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Malay (another chook named after her breed) and – shock of shocks – all three chicks were with her! I knew that both Sussex and Malay had been sitting on eggs under an old shed for weeks but since I only ever saw the chicks with Sussex, I assumed Malay was having the chook equivalent of a phantom pregnancy.

On closer inspection I noticed that two of the chicks looked a lot like Malay, pictured below – sort of ugly handsome. Maybe yesterday was the day she decided to take them back from Sussex. Malay has always been rather elusive so I didn’t think anything of it when I didn’t see her yesterday. She must have been hiding with the chicks somewhere, perhaps smirking when she heard Sussex’s squawks of grief.

If I were Sussex I would leave well enough alone because, as you can see, Malay is rather formidable!

Wings

2 Comments »
Nov 14

A mother chook’s grief

by jmgoyder

Many people think that chickens are stupid, only good for egg production or meat, and devoid of emotional intelligence. Not so. Early this morning I heard a terrible squawking from the back yard and, when I went to investigate, there was Sussex looking for her babies. The above picture was taken a couple of weeks ago when she thought she’d lost her third chick, a Thumbelina-sized ball of cotton wool, but luckily it turned up later in the day. A similar, happier picture featured in my last post.

It doesn’t look so hopeful today as, hours later, I can still hear Sussex calling them and her squawk is desperate and grief-stricken. Son, Husband and I have looked everywhere, but we can’t find them either, so we are all upset because this is the first time one of our chooks has produced chicks and Sussex has been such an incredible mother.

I am full of hope and dread.

Wings

8 Comments »
Nov 12

“Those thieving birds”

by jmgoyder

Silverchair’s song, “Those thieving birds” is one of my favourites and I was tempted to call this blog “Thieving birds” but I thought that might be just as obscure as the weird metaphors in this beautiful song (check it out …. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCQ-TWipBhc )

For me, the idea of thieving birds, despite its darker implications, means this: These birds have stolen tidbits of my heart then returned them to me like nuggets of gold. Yeah, I know that sounds a bit cliched and twee but hopefully the pictures will do the talking here.

Top left: Pearl, our first Sebastopol gosling

Top right: Tina Turner, the rooster I thought was a hen

Left: King peacock competing with white peacock

Right: Emery, the emu chick at two months of age!

Wings

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