jmgoyder

A bit over a week ago I began to hear cheeping every time I went out in the evening to feed, water and put the gang (geese and duck and turkey) into their pens. None of the peafowl have ever been penned because our dogs don’t attack them and they fly up into the trees at night to sleep.

We have five peacocks (one white and the rest blue) – and seven peahens (two white, four green and Gutsy9), but during mating season all except one peahen and G9 disappeared. I assumed they were all nesting somewhere, or trying to, and I hoped for the best that none of them had been killed by wild foxes. But as the weeks went by I began to lose hope and the peacocks’ cries became more mournful.

I didn’t even let myself hope for chicks because, with the crows and foxes, I knew they had little chance of surviving, so I put the cheeping sound down to my imagination and/or the sound of wild bird chicks somewhere. I did a bit of a search every afternoon/evening, but nothing.

Then one evening, I saw them! Two chicks with Queenie (our oldest peahen) foraging under a shrub. I was delighted, but decided not to intervene because I could see they were a great little unit, so different from when I found G9 a year ago, obviously abandoned.

I didn’t hold much hope for them but for the next couple of evenings they were still around! Our dogs hadn’t detected them, they hadn’t drowned in the pond, and they were surviving without human intervention. Nevertheless, I knew these tiny creatures were in great danger from predators so a week ago Ming herded Queenie and the chicks into our smallest pen. I put a shallow water bowl in the yard and lots of wheat grain, which is what I feed all of the birds, and, when they were all still there the next morning I breathed a sigh of relief. The bottom of our three animal yards is meshed to prevent foxes getting in so I assumed Queenie and her kids were sleeping there.

And maybe they were! But then, the other evening, they weren’t; they were gone! I assumed the worst until they were back in that same pen the next morning. This has been going on now for a few days: Queenie and chicks in pen during daylight; Queenie and chicks gone from pen by 7pm.

How do they do this magic trick? I will tell you tomorrow. In the meantime: