news and a joke

The ducks that were injured have recovered from their various damage and are fine again but going to bed earlier - which is a blessing for them and me. But it has made me unwilling to be away from home at dusk. One of the moorhens was back in the garden yesterday - several weeks after I thought they must have been eaten by the fox. The mallard duck on the local pond has lost her brood of 7 ducklings but she or another duck is now laying in the school playground opposite, much to the delight of the local kids. So mixed fortunes here.

Two of the original hens are trying to widen their horizons - the white and the brown hens are both found daily on the road pecking at food. I've brought the brown hen back from the park behind my house twice today already, and I was greeted in church by two of the older women gleefully telling me how they had stopped on their way to escort the white hen back into the garden through the gate. It has become a Matson sport - all sorts of locals old and young tell me how they rounded up a chicken earlier in the day. Outreach evangelism? Well an opportunity for lots of poultry jokes anyway, including one from a very small boy who asked me in his high little voice "Why did the chicken cross the road?" I said - like you should - "I don't know. Why did the chicken cross the road?" To which he replied looking worried, "I don't know either but it's dangerous 'cos it will get runned over." Is there a future here...??

Holy Week

Today I buried four of my beautiful ducks killed by the fox on Tuesday. Well, to be precise, 2 were dead when I found them, one was so injured I had to kill her there and then but found it so very hard to achieve and one (twelve year old Donald) died of his injuries the following day. Two others were injured but so far have survived. Ellie was fabulous as we had to inject the survivors with antibiotics. The garden is so empty without those particular birds. I hoped the fox would return to take the bodies but no luck - I contemplated leaving them on Painswick Beacon for it there but realised that the bird flu fanatics would have a fit and the world would end!
So Holy Week has been more emotional than usual for this ENTP (Myers Briggs for a person who thinks rather than feels as a first resort... and a second resort too.)

One Swan

This beautiful image is part of the BBC reporting frenzy on bird flu today. The local paper has a huge splash on the front page about 4 dead seagulls being found, and sent for tests, in Gloucester. Radio 4's Today Programme ran long items this morning. It's all to much about not much information. I'm sick of it already. Today I've been very depressed... and while it's not all about bird flu coverage, it certainly doesn't help to get a proper perspective on the day.

My birds are fine of course. I found a secret nest under the pampass grass with lots of bantam eggs in it and a few hens' eggs too. Lots to give away this weekend.

So it's here at last

A mute swan in Fife is found to have died of the H5N1 strain of bird flu. Of course it was coming but now it seems different. Lots of stuff on the radio advising people to go on eating eggs and poultry - I suppose people need to be told the bleeding obvious! But after hearing how some people in the last few months have stopped feeding garden birds and instead are driving them away and destroying their nests, I suppose the bleeding obvious isn't that obvious to some people!

No sign of the moorhens over the last few days but then I've not been at home to look out the window much. The park next door is getting a spring tidy-up so the ground cover on which they rely has gone temporarily so maybe they're just hiding somewhere else for a bit. Shame.

Donald's eye is good enough now for me to stop persecuting him with the ointment. He's a real sweetie and I'm looking forward to Ellie getting home and meeting him.

magic ointment

Went to the vet locally and explained about 'foamy eye'. So now I've got some cream to put on it (how British!) - twice a day in both eyes! First catch your drake; then find very small tube in pocket; then catch drake again; then get top off tube; re-catch drake; apply ointment; lose top of tube in mud; lose drake; lose cool; slip in mud; swear and stomp indoors to change trousers; read duck recipes while drinking large glass of red wine. And then it was lunchtime! So by the end of the week of such activity I'll have contributed to global warming through repeated use of the washing machine, out-cussed my neighbours, rotted my liver, and grown even more fond of Donald than I was at the beginning because I have to look him in the eye(s) each time I do it - twice a day.

foamy eye

The oldest duck in the garden is about 12. I've had him (Donald) for a couple of months I guess and he was passed on with another white drake to me by Gill who lives a few streets away. She named him! He's very big, very arthritic and because he's white I can see that the feathers around his eyes are slightly discoloured. He has a large white patch in the corner of one eye - do ducks have third eyelids? I've no idea at present. My duck management books aren't that detailed. So the book mentions foamy eye which can be brought on by a bump or similar injury and often happen when drakes fight over females. I've tried to buy something to soothe it over the counter in an agricultural merchants but they're not allowed to sell stuff like that any more. Taking him to the vets is out of the question - he'd find it very stressful, and because of the panic about birdflu so would the others in the waiting room. It may mean vet consultation or it may just subside over the weekend on its own. Any advice welcome... and yes I have thought about putting a camomile tea bag (cooled) on it but cathching him is part of the trauma for us both!