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.

Picture

Picture got lost in the ether!

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.

Little and Big

Little is little. Failure to thrive is what one might say, except that he is thriving - he runs around, eats, drinks, sleeps. He just doesn't grow. And we have started bringing him into the house at night, not for the warmth so much as that we fear he would get trampled all over by the bigger keets in their night enclosure. To keep him company we bring Big in too.

Big's not so big, but is bigger than Little. He's the one whose toes we straightened. He continues to be very snuggly when we pick him up.

Since the day he nearly drowned in the pond, Sage (one of last year's whites) has hung out in the sideyard and the cage with Hawkeye and the babes. He's become very clingy with us and timid of the other big birds. A strange turnaround for the guy who was one of the alpha birds of the flock. We've tried to reintroduce him to the others since then, and he always ends up in a tree or on the roof - and Paul has to go up and coax him down.

This is a new blog and so far "no frills" - I just want to get this thing started.

We have been boring our friends and family silly for the last few weeks (all right – years) with daily reports of the goings-on of our menagerie of assorted birds - and so I'm taking my stepson's advice to start a blog. This should be fun and amusing to all - but may also be useful to other bird owners - in particular, those with guineas and chooks (Australian for chickens) which is what we have.

I shall introduce you to them all...

First are "The 4 adults" - they're male, 2 years old, that ordinary guinea color (dark with polka dots), and all that remain of the first 10 that we got 2 years ago. We lost 6 in the first year while we were learning how to keep them at home - we've pretty much got that one worked out now - the promise of white millet in the chook house at dinner time - plus a hopper full of food - is enough to bring them home most of the time.

Then are "The 4 whites" and "The 3 greys" and Hawkeye - they're last year's lot. We only lost 2 this year - one got run over, one got lost (?) in the woods and didn't come home. Of the 4 whites, 2 were handled a lot from keet-hood (baby guineas are called keets) - one is Sage, one is Sunshine. Sage wears green bracelets, Sunshine yellow. They don't exactly come running to you, but they are quite content in your arms once you've picked them up. The others squawk a lot if you do that. Of those 7 at least 3, maybe 4 are female and have been laying eggs now since about mid March. More on that later.

One of the greys and one of the adults have become "The Couple" - they go off and do their own thing every day, whereas most of the others hang out together. We are pretty sure she has a nest on the property next door. And we know they hang out a lot on the next property over from that. And almost every night we have to go looking for them, helping them figure out how to get back over the fence that they cheerfully flew across just that morning, and getting them to follow Evie (the black labrador-mix) back to the chook house. If we start calling early enough (a couple hours before their bedtime) they will often come home on their own now. But not always.

And Hawkeye. Dear, sweet Hawkeye. She is neurologically damaged. Can't fly. Falls over a lot. Is scrawny and sort of misshapen. And has been known to go to sleep in my lap. But because she's not quick, the others picked on her a lot when they were small. And damn near killed her one day - we found her huddled under a bush with the top of her head torn off. No exaggeration. That was the last time she was let loose with the others. Since then she has been brought inside (the kitchen during the winter, the chook house now in the summer) and kept safely in a cage for the night. During the daytime we would put her outside in a larger cage and the others would come and hang out nearby, but not molest her. One of the adults has become her friend - whatever the others are doing, he will settle in and lie beside the cage almost all day long. His name is Romeo. For obvious reasons.

That's the guineas.

There's also 4 hens - 3 Rhode Island Reds and a white one (breed unknown). They're oldish, were given to us by a friend, and we're lucky if we get one egg a day between them. They do not free range (the guineas do) because they scratch everything up - including our fruit bushes and flowers.

And then there's this year's lot.

Guinea hens are renowned for hiding their eggs - under bushes, in the woods, anywhere you might not find them. And we often don't. But this year's females took one look at the little stash of eggs appearing daily in the corner of the chook house and said "What's good for the chooks is good for us" and promptly started laying their eggs there. Wonderful!

We had read that a guinea lays 30-40 eggs before sitting on the nest. So we let the eggs sit there, assuming one of the hens would eventually do her job. Hah! No one took responsibility. The chooks ignored them too. And so finally we borrowed a broody chook from another farm. Brought her home. Named her Buffy (because she's a Buff Orpington). And within 24 hours she had made the nest her own. She ended up sitting on 24 guinea eggs. Which take 28 days to hatch. And a week later, we slipped 4 chook eggs (fertilised) under her too. They take 21 days. And sure enough, actually 19 days later, they all started hatching. And over the next 2 days, all but one guinea egg and one chook egg hatched! You never saw a prouder mama! And every one of those 26 babes tucked themselves underneath her to keep warm.

Now, 3 and a half weeks later, we have 8 keets left and 2 of the 3 chicks. 3 keets have died, despite our best effort to keep them alive – they just weren't meant to be. And we traded 10 keets for 5 chicks and a couple dozen eggs (to eat!). And we bought 5 4-week old pullets from Tom out at Efland Mill.

So the final count is: Guineas: 4 adults, 4 white, 3 grey, Hawkeye, and 8 babes. Chooks: 4 old hens, 5 teenagers, 5 traded chicks, 2 hatched here, and Buffy. Total birds: 37. What a delight!