The Couple

Have I mentioned "The Couple"? These are the 2 who stay very much to themselves and spend most of their day two properties over from us. For months we had to go and find them every evening and remind them how to get over the same fence they had quite happily flown over in the morning. Lately they've been turning up later than the others in the evenings, but at least they've been coming home and saving us the trouble of going to find them.

The night before last they did not come home. Ro-roh.

The next morning I was working outside during the morning, so kept an eye out for them to see if they might wander back. Eventually I see the guy bird, Guthlac. He's running up and down the front lawn carrying on an absolute treat. He just keeps squawking and squawking and calling and calling. So I think, Oh dear! Pega didn't come home – something's happened to her.

A little while later, I'm working at the front of the house and I hear him still frantically calling, but now he's next door. So I think, Oh very well, I'll go and check him out. So I go over there and look up and down the fence, and there he is sitting on a fencepost calling and calling and calling and calling – he's just distraught – and so I think, She's either lying there dead or she's lost or something. So I cross over the paddock and climb over the fence and go up to where he is and he's till there sitting on the fencepost going on and on and on. When I start to get close to him he finally stops calling and flys off and runs back across the paddock towards the house. OK, I give up. So I'm about to turn around and head back and what should I hear but a guinea hen laying an egg – and the noise is coming from one house further over. So there's a guinea laying an egg over on the other property and I think, Well, that's our grey hen, Pega. And about 10 seconds later, over comes Guthlac. I see him coming across the paddock there and he's running as fast as his little legs can carry him and he runs across the paddock and jumps over the fence and straight off through the woods he goes – just absolutely a straight line to where the noise had come from. So off I goes after him through the woods and when I get onto the lawn at the back of the house, who should come walking along as if everything was perfectly fine, but Guthlac and Pega, The Couple. Reunited. And I tell you, if guineas could whistle nonchalantly, I would swear that's what they were doing. Who? Us?

Hawkeye lays an egg

Is that so remarkable? You bet it is! Hawkeye is our “handicapped” bird – a few sandwiches short of a picnic, but the dearest, sweetest bird. She has been known to fall asleep on my lap while I meditated.

The other females of her generation have been laying for months now, and we just figured that Hawkeye would never be able to. So I was intrigued when I saw her go to the nest corner in the chook house 2 days ago, as soon as she came out of her cage in the morning. She just stood there, but really really close to the guinea already sitting on the nest. And then she got this dreamy look about her, and her eyelids started to flutter shut. She didn’t move, didn’t make a sound (unlike the other guineas who sound like strangled ducks when they lay), and a few minutes later, THUD, the egg dropped to the floorboard. Now I know why guinea eggshells are so hard! And she has done the same each day now –her eggs are smaller than the other guineas’ eggs, and not quite so yellow—we discovered this morning at breakfast. We’re wondering if the 28% protein feed that we’ve been feeding the keets has anything to do with it. She is not eating adult feed at the moment, since she’s in with the babies. Who knows? Anyway, we’re very proud of her.

Snake proof enclosure

The new sideyard is almost done. We have been working on it for almost 2 weeks, although this week it's been mostly Paul working on it, while I work in the garden – but because they're right beside each other, I can drop what I'm doing and go help out, and we can visit each other for the occasional kiss!

The door was a great find. It was sitting in the front yard of a house just down the street, along with a whole bunch of other discarded-looking things. So we stopped one day and asked the man (Fred) if he would sell it to us. No, he said, I built it, and I want to hang on to it. And then, for no apparent reason, he said, Oh sure, go on and take it – I don't need it. So we gave him ten bucks and the door was ours. It was actually 4 and half feet across – a massive thing – so we sliced a section out and then put it back together with braces – in what turned out to be a lyrical sunburst arrangement.

The fencing is quarter inch "hardware cloth" – wire really – totally and completely snake-proof – I'd like to see any snake get through that! And that's why we're putting so much time into it right now, because snakes could still get in to the old side yard, and Little is still easy game for snakes, as is our Hawkeye, the handicapped bird.