jmgoyder

wings and things

Late bloomers!

This morning I looked out the window to see three perfect moonflowers! I thought we would have to wait until next year (see my ‘moonflower’ posts), so this was a fantastic surprise. In the middle of the photo below you can see the brown shrivelled remains of the previous moonflowers. And, by the time it takes me to finish this post, the three late bloomers will have begun to close up, droop and fade. Their lives are so short and yet so full.

When I was younger and more prayerful than I am now, I used to look for signs all the time – like divine signs I mean. I soon discovered that if you spend all your time looking for divine signs, you end up tripping over your feet a lot! Nevertheless, these three late blooming moonflowers do seem like a good sign.

The fact that there are only three seems like a good sign is rather lovely too – one for Husband, one for Son and one for me. Well, why not!

We have another late bloomer here too – the Malay rooster. As you may or may not recall, he is the offspring of the Malay hen who was given to us months ago. He is now almost full grown and hangs out with the other two roosters, Tina Turner and No-name. The reason No-name doesn’t have a proper name is because, after the fox massacre of so many of our chooks, I stopped naming them.

No-name has a hell of a crow on him – he never stops crowing, day and night, and is much louder than Tina. Perhaps he is trying to prove that he deserves a better name than No-name because he will also sit on my lap and likes to be patted.

I was assuming/hoping that all of the (recently) missing hens were hiding somewhere, sitting on eggs but it’s now been way too long since I’ve seen any of them which can only mean that they have been ‘foxed’. I live in hope however that one day a zillion little chickens will emerge from underneath one of the many sheds. After all, I never expected to see another moonflower this year.

I’ll leave you with a picture of Malay. Isn’t he beautiful!  I have decided to call him Moonflower. It’s worth the risk….

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Strategies for dealing with aggressive birds

Happy new year everyone. One of the first things on my list of things-to-do-in-2012 is to improve these strategies.

The loaf of bread strategy:

Okay, you already know about Godfrey, the Godfather of ganderdom. Now, don’t get me wrong; I adore Godfrey, but it’s unrequited, so now I honk back at him when I am trying to pat MY geese, not HIS geese, and today I slapped him in the head with a loaf of bread after he bit me on the bum again. This was quite effective except that Godfrey took the whole loaf of bread and ran away, with the gang following. So much for their loyalty. I will need to perfect this strategy before I patent it. Oh, and don’t be fooled by the gentleness of this picture; it was taken months ago, before Godfrey became the Godfather.

The leg-shaking strategy:

Tina Turner is the Araucana rooster who seemed like a hen to begin with. Okay, so I got that wrong. Well, Tina has recently developed an antipathy towards me which he demonstrates by flying at my legs and latching on with his substantial claws. This is very painful, especially if you are wearing shorts. Now it has been suggested to me that his behaviour might be an expression of adoration but don’t think so. Anyway, this is how to do the leg-shaking thing. You just walk slowly towards the rooster, lifting one leg at a time and shaking it. If the rooster tries to get behind you and trick you, just keep doing the leg-shaking. Sometimes this means that you will accidentally kick the rooster but if that happens don’t worry as the rooster will recover. Incidentally, this is also a great leg-toning exercise.

I’ve used the following photo of Tina on this blog before but I haven’t been able to take another one because it’s hard to take a photo while you are leg-shaking.

The screech strategy:

This one is very good for Willy wagtails who are nesting in washhouses on old farms. In a previous post I mentioned how difficult it is for me to do the washing whilst being dive-bombed by screeching Willy wagtails. So now what I do is I run, screeching loudly, into the washhouse and continue screeching until I have put the load of washing on. I’ve learned that I have to screech louder than they screech in order for the strategy to work. What happens is that they will vacate the washhouse for approximately two minutes, so obviously this strategy needs a bit of tweaking.

This photo is courtesy of Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Willie_wagtail_in_nest.jpg

So there you have it: three very effective strategies for dealing with aggressive birds. I realise these strategies need refining, so any suggestions are welcome!

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