The birds continue well. We bring Little and Big inside at night and Nataw and I usually cuddle with them for a while. They are precious. This picture here is one of my favorites – that little bird used to just trundle along in those snowshoes, keeping up with all the others!

One of our white guineas has started brooding – that is to say, she's sitting on a nest. 24/7. What a miracle. The only trouble is the eggs are a couple of months old – they're duds, all marked with a big red "X" to encourage them to lay their eggs there every day. And now the blasted bird is sitting on them. She does have the grace to get up and stand aside when the others want to lay – but goes straight back on to the nest the moment they're done. And she allows us to come in and take the new ones every evening. We've talked about letting her hatch her own brood. But it would mean another lot of new ones before we're done raising the current lot – and we just don't have the time right now. If she's still in the mood in another month or so, we'll see about it. My guess though is that she'll tire of this pretty soon.

Talking about eggs - I've mentioned that guineas are secretive (generally) about where their nests are. However, the noise they make when laying is a dead giveaway – it's a sound like no other and is sort of like a duck might make while being strangled. In the last few days I've sprung two of our guinea girls laying – one in a secluded corner of the vegie garden. For the other one I had to look in all sorts of overgrown bushes and thorns this morning, but found her sitting pretty on what turned out to be 4 eggs.

For Fathers Day last weekend, Paul wanted all of us to work on building the new enclosed, snake-proof yard for the babes. It was such a nice time with Ian and Nataw and Paul and I all working together. He's spend some more time on it this week, and then he and I did some more this morning. It's close to finished. The birds are all terribly interested, and hang around and get under our feet and stick their necks out (is that what Australians mean when they use the term "sticky-beaking"?) to see what's going on. They are nothing if not social beings.

Pictures of the new yard soon. And of Little and Big.