Chickens

The chickens have now been out of the egg for about ten days. Whenever we open the lid of their box they jump up and start flapping their little wings, unless it's late afternoon, when they are settled down on their newspaper bed like one big fluffy pillow. Here they are when they were first put into their box after being in the incubator. Some of them are moving faster than others: for example the really blurry yellow one in the bottom left hand corner.

We have since bought them a proper water dispenser so they don't have to walk into the bowl to drink.

Abel came round the other day and showed us how to tell male from female - the woman - as he said. At first it seemed a very imprecise science, though there are things you can look for in the way their feathers develop, when they are very little, and then in their little vent, so you have to hold them upside down and massage them a little. I could kind of see what he meant, but am not giving up my day job yet.

Mother Nature has excelled herself, apparently, producing eight female and seven male chicks, evenly — though confusingly — distributed between dark and light colours.

One of Joel's friends came round on Tuesday, and they spent a good hour just sitting and cuddling the chickens. And Jane from the chook group is coming tomorrow to bring her son to admire them. The more we handle and pet them the better. One of them hopped up on my hand a moment ago, and that was cute. They are rapidly getting too big for this box, though they are far too small to go up to Ceres, so Paul is converting the lower floor of Joel's treehouse (don't ask) for lodgings. But today it's raining steadily, and in any case he is still recovering from being bitten by mosquitoes or spiders the other day.

The chook group is losing Kelly, but before she left for her Very Big Job in Canberra, she spent an afternoon with the chickens up at Ceres, and took these terrific photos.

One of the proud fathers.

"Peck hem up right as they grow and ete hem in."

Another proud father with a group of proud mothers.

This is what free range really looks like: chickens with room to run around under the fruit trees.

End of a long day in front of the camera.

Naughty chickens

Something there is about a chicken that wants to climb high into a tree at dusk. That's all well and good;  but the danger for chickens is early morning, when the foxes come out for breakfast.

Tonight at dusk I left the party, changed my shoes and drove up to Ceres. By the time I got there it was pretty much pitch black, and the chickens were lined up quietly on their perches in their shed. I counted them, but came up two short, and I remembered that this morning I had found two black ones outside that had eluded capture the night before (the group is on a fortnightly roster). Determinedly, I went outside with my little torch and started scouring the runs, to no avail. Finally I saw two black chickens high up in the quince tree. By climbing a couple of feet into the tree, I could just about reach them with the end of the rake, but no amount of poking or prodding (in the dark, clutching my little torch, trying to keep my balance, trying not to poke my eyes out on the tree, trying not to wreck my clothes, trying not to hurt the chickens) would budge them. I then tried giving the branch a vigorous shake, but from underneath I could just see their little feet curling tightly around the branch. Finally — it's pretty much pitch black, remember — I had to climb up over bags of mulch, onto the wooden supports of the flimsy wire fence between the two runs. Standing five feet off the ground, propping myself against a quince tree in the dark, I had to reach into the tree and grab the two chickens, one at a time, then precariously lower myself down so I could drop them onto the ground. And then I had to jump down off the fence and run around to the gate into the other run so I could chase them inside before they took it into their heads to fly up into the tree again.

All this time I had an image of how funny it all was — except that I wasn't so much laughing as swearing. The funniest thing though was when I finally picked them up to put them inside, they both set up such a dreadful complaining squark. They really didn't want to go inside; they really didn't see why they couldn't stay up in the tree; they'd been all right the night before, so what was my problem? And then when I put them inside, all the other hens woke up and squarked about being disturbed. Not sure I'm spelling 'squarked' correctly: but I kind of like the look of its awkward q and k there.

I was very glad to get back to the party, I can tell you. Our boys had played beautifully for Peter's guests: Joel set the keyboard to the marimbah sound effect, and it blended perfectly with electric bass and drums. After most of the guests had gone, the band and its parents dined on a perfect pea and ham soup and orange and almond cake, and then the boys played again. As parents, we are simply in awe of our talented children. We are of a generation that learned to play music, but learned to play set pieces from scores. These kids experiment and improvise, and take the beat from each other, and watch each other to produce perfect, irregular rhythms together. Now that Joel's wrist is out of plaster and is gradually  becoming more mobile, the drummer, naturally, has a thumb in plaster; and was holding the brush between the second and third finger of his hand.  The poor boy had a blister developing on the inside of one finger from this unaccustomed use. But they weren't going to stop the music...

Cockatoos, creek, work

What with going to the gym these days, and gadding about in Europe, and then being sick, and finishing up a big semester, I've not spent much time along the Merri Creek the last few months. So for how long have there been black cockatoos there? I went for a walk on Friday afternoon, and at first thought there was a murder of crows in the tree on the opposite bank, but then I saw a flash of yellow. (And as I realise, the Australian ravens tend to go about in pairs, as I know from seeing them perching on the top of the huge Norfolk pine two houses down.)  Anyway, I think they were yellow-tailed black cockatoos. There were about a dozen of them, moving from tree to tree, hanging upside down and generally ... creating (scroll down this page and click to hear their call). And I've just seen a few more this morning when I rode up to let the chickens out at Ceres.

This creek is full of surprises. I've been living on its banks for sixteen years, as its vegetation has been improved and refined, and de-Europeanised. I hated it when they cut down the willow trees (J used to sing at them in his pram when we would walk along), but since then I've probably seen more birds; and apparently the willows were dreadful for erosion of the banks.

Normally P does the fortnightly morning run to Ceres, but once I'd got out of bed it was pleasant enough riding along the creek. And now I'm back at my desk, it's good to think of those cockatoos busily working their way through the trees along the water.

Now that teaching is over, and now that I have the all-clear from my editor to do the final revisions of my book (and write the last chapter) more or less as I see fit, I'm preparing to fire up the cylinders for a final onslaught. I have to hold all the ideas in my head at the same time, to ensure the balance and sequencing of the argument is right. I had a quick read through the other day. Having a few months' break from it was good (try telling that to the ARC!), and overall it's not looking too bad. Let's see how much I can get done before I leave for Siena in July.

Today will be a pleasant clean-up day: washing, ironing, running Joel to band rehearsal, sweeping up piles of bright yellow leaves from the garden, catching up on email, then the afternoon at a friend's retrospective art exhibition where J, the drummer (the artist's son) and the bassist will play, then a dusk trip up to Ceres to put the chickens away. Then tomorrow? Chapter Seven:

Home

Well, it's a long flight home, but a happy one. Avoiding the drama of the plane with the big hole in it, our flight was on time and without incident, touching down at what would have been the civilised hour of 8.00 p.m., but for the fact of my case being on the very last trolley load off the plane, and me being at the wrong end of a 25 minute queue in the quarantine check-out. So I didn't get home till 10.00. Peter brought Joel home ten minutes after that (Paul is away for a bit: back very soon), and it was wonderful to see my boy, so tall and strong he nearly bowled me over with his bear hug.

We had hot chocolate and exchanged stories for an hour or so, then I slept, woke at 5.00, and then again at 8.00 and walked up to Ceres to let the chickens out (a fortnightly commitment to a co-op in an environmental park). It was lovely to be on the creek again, to see it full of water, and to see the golden wattle in bloom. In the garden at home, the hellebores and daphne are flowering, and best of all, last night I heard the little "cree cree cree" of a frog. I didn't blog when next door's cats caught Herbert last year: just too sad. But this was definitely the same species, so it seems as if Herbert's mating calls did have some effect... I think this one's probably called Herbert, too.

It's too wet for tennis, so it's a day for laundry, sorting out the travel receipts and preparing for the week ahead.