Two birds and a sunset...

Well, you know what they say about counting chickens before they're hatched...

I'm afraid our candling predictions were accurate. We only had ONE baby chick ready to be hatched. The other eggs weren't doing their thang. And yet the mother had been sitting on them out in a rain lashed paddock of long grass for four weeks!

Anyhoo... that's Nature as they say... Mum's now happily back in the coop with her husband and his other wife. And the sweet little lavender baby is in the nursery.

While on the subject of birds. We had a lovely visitor in our Euodia tree -- a scarlet honeyeater, found mostly in rainforest in NE QLD.

To attract birds, we've planted as many flowering natives as we can, and over lunch, E & I counted the number of birds we can remember sighting here. Counted over 60 varieties.

Over the weekend, we had rather a lot of wind and rain as ex Cyclone Olga finished her dance around the Gulf and headed south to the west of us, down to the Channel Country. She left rather interesting skies in her wake.

guinea gossip...

The saga of the guinea fowl continues…
Can’t show photos at the moment as I cleverly left my laptop and its attachments behind in T’ville!! It had to happen one time, but why did it happen when I’m on deadline? Arrgh!
Anyway, to start with – good news. Young Lazarus/Gloria is thriving. After being hand fed the whole time we were in Townsville last week, it’s nearly twice its size and last night spent a night back in the main coop, sleeping inside one of E’s flannelette shirts.
Also, we’ve discovered that Icarus, the young male who kept flying up and hitting his head on the roof, was actually being pecked by the other more dominant male. On further observation, we felt so sorry for him that we decided to let him out and he now lives quite happily outside the pen, although he often calls to the females to follow him.
One female seems keen, I must say.
Today, for the first time, we’ve let all the adults out to explore our block and they’re having a wonderful time, constantly pecking, presumably at insects. Sometimes they’re in pairs, but often the dominant male lures both females to wander with him and chases poor Icarus away, so we’re giving serious thought to the best way to manage Icarus’s romantic interests, and we’re very much hoping that the young keet is Gloria. Alpha males are more trouble than they’re worth.
On the writing front, I’m in the final part of my book, (bless E for letting me use his laptop) and tomorrow I’m having another gathering of NQ romance writers, which should be fun.

new additions to the family...

We are now officially country folk with a little flock of guinea fowl. Four adults and four babies (the babies are called keets.)

Elliot has built them a house, with lovely leaf litter on the floor full of worms and insects and they have an automatic grain feeder and an automatic water dispenser, a mirror for them to admire themselves (they adore it!) and perches on which they can roost -- oh, and shade as well as protection from the rain.
We’ll keep them in the pen for three to four weeks, and after that they’ll be able to free range on the block, the plan being that they’ll return to the pen to roost each night. There’s a special high opening and shelf for them to fly back in that keeps them safe from cats etc.
Here they are checking themselves out in the mirror. E read about this trick on the internet. Honestly, they stay there for hours admiring themselves, or trying to work out what the heck these other birds are -- and at least it stops them from fretting about being in the pen while they get used to our place. We already have one egg, but we’re not planning to eat it. I’ve begged that we don’t eat any of the birds either, in case you were wondering. One reason we wanted guinea fowl, apart from the fact that they’re quiet and look cute running around the place in their flocks, is that they’re reputed to be very good at catching and eating ticks and chasing snakes. In other words, they deal with two drawbacks of country life in one blow.
If you’re worried about what will happen to them while we’re doing our city stints, our lovely neighbours will be keeping an eye on them. A big plus of country living. Will keep you posted.