The lovely couple
Okay, when did I morph into the crazy bird lady? The neighbors brought these two over this afternoon; they chopped down a tree, and a nest tumbled out. Near as I can figure, these’re Eurasian Collared Doves, maybe two weeks old.
The internet’s best advice was to put the nest back as close to original site as possible and trust their parents. I did that and sat a discreet distance away hoping for a happy ending. The garden was full of hoo-hoo-hooing doves, but nobody came near the nest.
Then night fell and a nasty storm blew up and…well. Couldn’t leave them to hypothermiate, could I? So they’re tucked up in a box upstairs with a hot water bottle and a cropful of warm chick crumb.
I’ll put them back in the nest tomorrow, and if that doesn’t work…not sure. Find a dove rescue, maybe. I don’t think I’m getting enough food in them to raise them up myself.
As for the other lovely couple, I thought the royal wedding was charming. And if you don’t agree, you’re a poop.
Good weekend, everyone!
April 29, 2011 — 9:48 pm
Comments: 45
Sad chicken demands cuddle
Heh. Just seeing how many chicken pictures I can post before my readership clucks and pecks gravel. And flies away. Truth is, I’m so deep into my country idyll at the moment, I hardly turn the computer on until sundown. It’s Spring, peeps!
Don’t worry — it’s only a matter of time before Obama does something stupid and photogenic. I’m there!
Mad Mapp is still broody. I shut her out of the henhouse in the morning, where she alternates hopping into my lap for a cuddle and lunging at the babies, making them squeak and flap. Lucia is so cheezed off at Mapp’s crazy auntie routine, she’s laying eggs in the flower border around back.
Yeah, the shade of Walt Disney called. He’s like, “can you dial it down a notch? You’re making me plotz down here.”
April 26, 2011 — 9:51 pm
Comments: 28
I’m the chicken on the…left
So this qualified herbalist who gave me the myrrh-flavored body paint, I asked her if there’s anything she’s allowed to dispense which really works as a sleeping draught. Chronic insomniac, me. So she made me up a little something.
Tried it last night, and it works! Sends me into short, fitful, dream-filled naps all night, and a deep, steady, coma-like snooze all day long. In a lawnchair. In the sun. Covered in chickens.
I’m as useless today as…Mapp, trying to hatch that damn stupid wooden egg.
p.s. For the record, most of the chatter I hear about the royal wedding is coming from US sites I read. Here, reactions are mostly limited to a) eyerolls and b) coming up with the most obnoxious possible commemorative merchandise.
p.p.s. Though a nearby downmarket town is trying to put together one of those street parties on The Day. They don’t seem to be getting much traction. I asked Uncle B if I could go. Eyeroll.
April 21, 2011 — 10:22 pm
Comments: 15
As a matter of fact, we ARE spring chickens
SQUEEEEE! (Also in color).
We took a long drive through the South Downs today (gas: $8.66/gallon US, e-yow) to Middle Farm and bought these two lovely birds.
Pekin bantams again. The one on the left is Victoria, a partridge, and the one on the right is Violet, a lavender.
Victoria was the given the name of Vita Sackville-West (two posts down) and Violet was her lover of many years. Though Vita and her husband were genuinely and deeply in love with each other (and he was into boys or llamas or little white dogs or something). Whatever — CHICKENS!
Tomorrow they will see sunshine and walk on grass for the very first time, and we will begin the long, ticklish business of introducing them to the flock, AKA the other two.
And thus my poultry inventory is complete.
April 20, 2011 — 9:38 pm
Comments: 22
Dramatic chicken
It was one of those life-changing events: one minute you’re an ordinary housewife who pretends to be a weasel on the internet, and the next you’re the sort of woman who rubs olive oil onto a distressed chicken’s bottom.
Honestly, I don’t know why it never occurred to me that laying an egg might be painful, but Mapp screamed for three hours today trying to squeeze one out. She laid her first egg about a month ago, but she’s only been doing this awful shrieking thing for a couple of days now.
Afterwards, she brags on herself for a while and then goes about her business, apparently perfectly happy.
I don’t know if I have a hen with problems or a drama queen on my hands.
April 19, 2011 — 10:33 pm
Comments: 32
President SooperGenius
Cleek the peecture for veedio. I slung this together in a real hurry trying to get it out last night, and then YouTube let me down. So it’s not brilliant (a soundtrack would’ve perked it up considerably), but the video clip needs to be out there in as many forms as possible.
The AP originally reported this, then thought better of it and tried to airbrush it away: Obama advising a man with ten kids who is worried about gas prices that what he really needs is a new car.
For those of you who aren’t politically inclined — and by way of explaining why I didn’t spend today turning that video into something awesome — here’s one minute and forty seconds of my chickens walking around pecking stuff. Seriously, that’s all there is to it. I spent my whole day sprawled over a lawn chair in the sunshine with a glass of iced tea watching them walk around and peck stuff.
Try it. It’s hypnotic.
April 8, 2011 — 8:52 pm
Comments: 43
Optics: FAIL
I know what y’all are thinking — you did this P’shop last week, Stoaty. Yeah, well, hey — HE DID IT AGAIN. His current political advisers flat out suck.
Anyway, shut up, I have some important news: Mapp laid her first egg today. She’s the little ginger chicken. You never heard so much clucking and be-GAK-ing. I told you she’d be a drama queen if she ever got around to laying an egg.
Actually, poor thing, it took her all morning and she shed a little blood over it, so I shouldn’t make fun. I wouldn’t care to blow large hard objects out my vent after breakfast. Especially if it took me by surprise.
In honor of Ovum Prime, I broke out the Oscar Mayer bacon I’d been saving and fried up a proper breakfast-lunch. Oh, don’t get me wrong — English bacon is lovely stuff. But it’s thick and chewy. Like Canadian bacon. But not round.
Oscar Mayer (made in Spain) is the only American-style bacon I can get — and I can’t always get it. I suspect English people think there’s something terribly, terribly wrong with it.
“Oh, I say, Clive, there’s something terribly, terribly wrong with this bacon — it shriveled away to nothing and left the most extraordinary pool of grease behind.”
Anyhow, if I picked up a dose of salmonella, I’m going to drop kick that silly ginger bird into the next county.
March 21, 2011 — 9:20 pm
Comments: 31
The one on the left, not so much
The Telegraph says chickens are capable of empathy. Huh. They don’t know Mapp.
I got nothing today, so I might as well give you a chicken update. The picture is the girls from last year, but we are hoping to pick up a couple more pullets this month. Gots to get on the phone to my chicken pusher.
We haven’t decided whether to stick with an E.F. Benson theme, or to call the new birds Betty and Wilma or Peanut Butter and Jelly or Sturm and Drang or something. I suppose it’s best to go birds first, then names.
Mixing in new chickens is going to be fun. It’ll be like the Crips and the Bloods out there until pecking order is established.
Oddly enough, Mapp is easily the most aggressive, adventurous and downright manic hen, but gentle Lucia is Boss Chicken. Cluck softly and carry a big beak is her motto.
Got the first egg of the season last week, and three more since. Still pretty sure it’s just Lucia laying, though.
The day something large and hard comes out of Mapp’s bottom, there’s going to be a BE-GACK heard ’round the world.
March 9, 2011 — 11:27 pm
Comments: 29
Important Chicken Update
I woke up with Uncle B’s cold this morning, so it’s as good a time as any to resort to an Important Chicken Update.
They’re fine. They even handled Bonfire Night and the attendant fireworks, no problemo.
It’s still just Lucia laying, though. Ten weeks, forty-eight eggs — pretty good going for a bantam. We call them luciafruit. I have one hard boiled most mornings.
I feel a little bad about it. Not least because I suspect it hurts squeezing one out. It usually takes her several trips to the nest box. And if you stand outside, you can hear her make a faint, high-pitched “eeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE” sound.
I rose from my sickbed, tiptoed out and took this picture for you. Note the difference. They’re exactly the same age, but Lucia’s comb and wattles are big and floppy (and, you can’t see, bright red). She also had a complete change of personality, from shy to restless and friendly and extroverted.
I don’t know what the hell is wrong with Mapp. I went out yesterday, and Lucia was sitting on the nest, all serious and business-y, and Mapp was sitting on Lucia, like, “HEY THIS IS FUN BUT NEXT TIME I GET TO PLAY BUS DRIVER.”
Good weekend, everyone!
November 19, 2010 — 7:24 pm
Comments: 30
YESSS!!!!
Do delicious, wholesome snacks come out of your best friend’s bottom in the morning? No? Too bad, so sad.
First egg: Friday the 10th. We’ve had six more since. They were supposed to start laying between 20 and 24 weeks old, and it was within a few days of week 22 exactly.
Here’s the thing, though: we think it’s just one of them at it.
I was told chickens change personality when they start laying — they weren’t kidding. Lucia (formerly the shy, dependant one) has become a whole ‘nother chicken. She’s restless and goes off on her own, without her little friend. She follows me around the garden like a puppy. Her comb and wattles have gone bright red and poofy. When you reach toward her, instead of beGAKking and flapping away, she hunkers down, throws her elbows out and waits — presumably a sexual readiness posture (ummm…ewww, Lucia).
The other one is still the same flighty peckerhead she’s always been.
The eggs are so small and perfect…they’re like the Barbie Dream House version. I feel like I should cook them in a tiny frying pan with a tiny spatula. They reckon it’s two bantam eggs to a large fowl egg, but the bantam ones have a higher proportion of yolk to white.
Mmmmm…yolk!
So far, I have eaten two. Fried. On a tiny piece of toast.
September 21, 2010 — 7:50 pm
Comments: 53