Drumming and Peeping

We have three new chickens as of yesterday!  I was tired of only getting one egg a day so decided it was time we perked up the old pensioner flock with a few youngsters.  These girls are only eight weeks old so will be a while before they start laying.

It was a lot of fun to watch them begin to explore the chook dome as soon as they were released. At this age they love to run around flapping their wings, so they did a lot of that, and then they took about two seconds to find the little bits of grass poking through the wire and start pecking it, despite probably never having seen grass before.  Not long after that they were turning their sweet little heads sideways to look up for possible perches, and in no time were jumping up to the perching spots in the dome.  Amazing how strong their instincts are.

At bedtime, when it was nearly dark, so they were sleepy, I tried to settle them in a warm nesting box with hay in it, but they wanted up, so I lifted them one by one up to the sleeping shelf to sleep beside the big girls, and they settled down in no time, just a little way away from the grumpy old chooks. So far the old girls have been fairly horrified by them, but I haven't seen any bullying. I think getting them young like this offers them some protection because they still make baby peeping noises and perhaps chooks are wired to be nicer to peeping babies.  It truly is the most charming sound.

Kitty, Cyrano, makes a cameo appearance in this too, looking bright and beautiful in the spring sunlight.  :)  I think you can just hear the baby chickies peeping, that and the local wild birds, and the mortally offended adult chooks in the distance complaining about the babies, and the kids screaming across the road at the school.  It isn't always peaceful living here!

It's so funny when they run around madly, flapping their little baby wings at the end.

The nice guy at the local stockfeed store picked me out three somewhat different-coloured ones so I can tell them apart.  One is spotty so I was calling her Spot a lot, so I decided this generation can have cliched dog names. So, we now have Spot, Rover and Fido to go with Nanny Ogg, Madame Blavatsky, Mrs Guppy and Spock.  I am nothing if not eclectic in my chicken naming.  :D

I'd been very tempted to get a heritage breed this time, but with being sick and all, the thought of raising day olds just now was too hard, and anyway I truly do love the outgoing personalities of the Hylines.    


I got a photo of Andrew heading off to work yesterday too, with his new work ute. I am so happy for him I could cry.

He is so close to his work now, he can even join us for our dog walks before heading off.  This morning he got this photo for me of the thickest bunch of trigger plants I've ever seen in one area.

Can you see all the white flowers?  There are some blue Leschenaultia there too.

It was this area that was burned just last year.  Trigger plants apparently like a post-burn environment.  They are amazing plants.  Every smallish white flower has a little stem that sticks up and away form the centre, and when an insect comes to take the nectar from the flower, the little trigger-stem pops over and daubs the insect square somewhere on the body with pollen and collects pollen left there by other plants. hey even have different contact positioning for different types of trigger plants so they don't mix up the pollen! How clever is that?

Spang!  Gotcha!

If you go to the site this pic came from, you can see a little bit of film showing it happen. 

I must say, I found the walk exhausting this morning though we didn't go far.  I'm still post flu, and also very anemic which is an issue because I can't tolerate taking supplements, so I am limited to using a skin cream with iron in it, and eating steak as much as possible.  It's a horrible feeling of being both weak and tired.  Reminds me way too much of the Lyme Disease years, I can tell you.  Flashback to the bad old days!  Scary!

We went to drumming on Wednesday night because I was determined to get there to farewell one of the circle leaders, Simon, who is off to the Eastern States to live for a few years.   We went to his house to drum at his drum circle.  It was worth the effort.  Such lovely people and a great place to drum.  I got pretty tired so was not at my best in my drumming, but Andrew had a lot of fun with the doons.

And Glenn, Michelle and Simon were having fun too.

Altogether there were eight of us drumming, which was really good because we could play around a lot with parts.

            
I must admit we left earlier than the others, because I was just weary to the bone.  I've missed two controlled burns this week too, dammit.  Hope I'm back to normal soon!  There is so much to do here around the property and with the brigade, and I still haven't started writing again either.  You'd think by now I'd know all about letting my body dictate what I can do, but nope, I still fight it, in fact I think I'm worse now because I just don't want miss a single day of my new active life that I still appreciate so much!

Andrew was at the night burn this week and got this great pic of Andy.  It was perfect for the banner of our brigade's facebook page. 

Hopefully by the time I post again I'll be all better and able to post more interesting stuff that I've done as well!