we have geese!

Yesterday we welcomed 3 new members to our Wind Dancer family.

Three gorgeous geese.

I'm in love with them.

And I never wanted geese.

This is the story: Wayne has always loved geese. I finally gave in and started to consider it. Then I spent about a month online looking for some geese for him.

In the beginning all I found were exotic geese. I didn't want them. I wanted the plain ones like I've seen for years. White. Big. Gorgeous.

I found a guy who had sold all his goslings but had some 1-1.5 year olds he was happy to sell. One female and 5 males. I claimed the female and one male.

When we got there yesterday he offered us another male for free because he just had too many of them. We accepted.

You know us. We have no spine when it comes to animals...

So now we have 3 gorgeous geese who refuse to talk to us.

I'd have taken photos of them but they're sulking and I don't want to make them hate me more than they already do by forcing my company on them.

I don't blame them mind you. We lobbed up at their place yesterday where they'd been minding their own business, weren't even properly introduced  before we grabbed them, manhandled them into cages in the back of a noisy truck, on the hottest day of the year, driven all over the countryside, then plonked them in a small enclosure (the one we call Alcatraz which had been used for the roosters before) and then had the nerve to try and make friends with them.

They're not happy.

They haven't come out of the little shed since we got them.

They just huddle together and glare at us...

Sigh.

I want to make friends!

I already named one of the boys. His name is Henry. He looked like a Henry. He has one slightly squinty eye so you can tell which one he is.

I never realised, but the boys have orange rims around their eyes and their eyes are blue.

I absolutely love our geese. I hope they learn to love us back and love living here.

z

wire, frames and photos

Thought I'd share these two wire frames I made and sold at the last market.

This first one is using... you guessed it!... birdwire!

'Cause as you know, I have a ton of it. Though a ton less than I had before after lining the dog pen with it for the ducks...

Speaking of which, we now stand 2 ducklings down, 8 remaining. One egg down, 9 remaining. And holding our breath.

But I digress. Back to the frame. I have a couple of frames with this design on them so I decided I'd try one as a birdwire photo display.

The second frame I did with the wire lines for something different. (I like the birdwire better!)

Still, they're both very handy. If I hadn't sold them I'd be using them right now.

z

make a crown from a tin can

Don't you just love crowns? Especially rusty crowns.

I saw a rusty crown on Pinterest when I first joined it and really really wanted one of my own. But where to find one?

Solution: make my own!

Firstly, I got a tin can. This one used to have some kind of fruit in it so it was bigger than your usual baked beans can.

I got a piece of paper and cut it to fit around the can. Then I folded it so I could divide it into uniform peaks for my crown.

I cut out the pattern and traced it onto the can using a marker.

I used tin snips to cut the can and then used a file to make the edges a little less dangerous.

Its still pretty sharp, however, so if I was to make another one I'd go a step further and fold over the edges to round them off.

So, my crown was made, but of course it was WAAAAY too shiny.

I put it in a solution of salt and vinegar, but really, I've never had as much luck with that as they claim on Pinterest. I found that you can leave most things in salt and vinegar for-EVER and nothing happens. HOWEVER, once you take them out and expose them to the air a while things start to happen. ie Rust happens.

With the crown, I sat it in a bowl of solution and kept turing it to get a kind of rusty effect.

Given my crown is a bit on the deadly side, I'll be using it as a decorative item in places where no one can impale themselves on it. ie, I won't be leaving it on the couch...

I really enjoyed working with the tin. I'm thinking of a few other projects I could use tin cans for...

For now I think I'll just concentrate on the other 5097 projects I have waiting.

z

PS. Some updated photos of the crown. Turns out it wasn't finished after all. It took Wayne 5 seconds to 'fix' it. All he did was bend the points and it was better!

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life, death, dam!

 

Yesterday morning we had a rude awakening.

Its not like we didn't KNOW Kevin was coming over with his diggy-diggy to do our driveway and fix the dam... its that I was so wiped out I'd been in bed since 7.30pm the night before (I should  say afternoon before) and Wayne was living in denial or something. He'd woken up, got a coffee and come back to bed with a book.

When the truck arrived the dogs went bezerk. I was up, running around trying to put some clothes on, get to the door, keep the dogs in all at once.

Of course the dogs hadn't been out to pee cause that's my job in the morning... so they needed to go out and pee and not eat Kevin before he did our job for us.

So here I am, running around pulling on track pants with one hand, boots with another, breasts bouncing cause who has time to pull on a bra at a time like this, with dogs frothing at the mouth around me, barking at the machine wielding murderer who'd obviously come to massacre us as we slept.

I rounded the dogs up, heading them out into the paddock where I thought I'd release them so Kevin would be safe for a while, get to the gate and what do I see???

Three tiny ducklings in a little pile right outside the gate.

SH#$*#^#T!

Can't let the dogs out. Those tiny things are like squeaky toys to them!

I go out the gate, grab the ducklings, yelling "WAYNE!!!! WE HAVE DUCKLINGS!!! I NEED YOU! HURRY UP!"

I mean, this is the end of the world.

I have a handful of tiny ducklings.

Again.... its not like we didn't KNOW they were coming. We just thought we had another week or so.

And yet, this last week I came home one day and saw crows hanging around. One had something in its mouth. I knew we had ducklings...

Wayne and I had discussed this whole plan in detail.

We were going to get out into the area around the dam before Kevin came over. We were going to remove the electric fence which used to protect the willows I'd put in there (which we moved a few weeks ago and which seem to be doing fine in their new spots thankfully), and search the reeds for duck nests.

I'd already found one with about 10 or more eggs in it. We knew there were more cause we hardly ever saw about 3 of our female ducks... we knew they were sitting on eggs.

The plan had been that Wayne would fix up the old dog pen, line the bottom with bird wire to make it duckling proof, then we'd go out, grab the eggs and mothers and move them into the pen to safety.

Because:

1. Every year we have tons of ducklings and none survive unless we can catch them and lock them up. The crows eat them all. Its heartbreaking.

2. Kevin was going to work around the dam and might squash the nests, eggs, ducks....

Right.

Good plan.

So here we are, yesterday morning, running around like jumping beans on speed. Cause we had a plan!

A mother duck hissing at me with her ducklings under her wing.

First nest was the one I'd found first time around. It had no eggs left, just a few ducklings. About 6 of them I think. I put them in a basket and started fixing up the pen. The mother duck was going crazy. We left the gate open and she eventually came in and sat near the basket. Good. When the pen was finished, we put the basket inside and she followed.

All's well.

Well. Not all.

One duckling was dead at the bottom of the basket. I don't know if I killed it when I was catching them and it wriggled and I dropped it... It wasn't high. But it was dead. sigh.

Later on, I found another one dead. Both the dead ones were fawn coloured.... probably girls.

Then I went out and found another nest. Right next to the first. It had an egg with a hole in it but nothing was happening... dead duckling. Sigh again. 6 unhatched eggs and 8 ducklings. We got all of those, picked up the entire nest, and put it all in the basket.

This mother didn't seem to care that much. She didn't come for the ducklings.

Mind you, they were much quieter (younger) than the others. They weren't squeaking for mom.

Plus the excavator makes a lot of noise. And our neighbour was brushcutting on the other side of the paddock. Even if they were squeaking, she probably wouldn't have heard them.

I covered them with a blanket to keep them warm.

Then I spotted 2 ducklings, most likely from the first batch, on the dam.

SH#$*#^#T again.

No way I could catch them on the dam. They were on their own.

I hated that.

I saw a magpie flying over...

Anyway, after about 2-3 hours of no success enticing the mother to come after the ducklings, I made an executive decision. These nests were really close to eachother, maybe ducks raise ducklings in a kind of 'village' approach.

I put the nest, eggs and ducklings in with the mother duck and her remaining 4.

She sat on the nest and covered all the ducklings.

Success!

I felt so much better.

This morning there were 2 casualties. Wayne found one outside when feeding them, I found another in the nest when mom and babies were out paddling in the playpool. Darn. Down to 10 now.

Still... its better odds than they'd get out in nature.

Mind you. We found another nest. It had eggs and ducklings. Some totally newly hatched. We watched some of them hatch right in front of our eyes. It was amazing. I'd only ever seen something hatch out of an egg on TV before.

I almost feel like these are MY babies...

I so want to save them as well, but we just can't catch those other two mothers. I think they're older and wiser. I can't expect that one mother to hatch and raise all those babies, can I?

Someone said a chicken can raise up to 20 young... dare we try? Or do we let nature take its course and see what happens? Its almost certain death for them if we don't try.

We don't need a million ducks on our dam, but it would be nice to raise some more... I figure we'll probably end up with 6-7 of the current 10 making it to maturity. I hope. Should I grab the rest and up the odds? Or not interfere?

When we moved here we had 12 ducks. We're down to 7-8 now. Maybe less cause of the mothers on nests I have no idea how many we actually have. If we only raise the ones we've captured now and all 10 survive, we'll have about 16-18 ducks. Surely thats enough for anyone, right?

What am I trying to do? Convince myself that I shouldn't go out and catch the rest of them?

We have 2 geese coming next week. I've always been against geese cause they can be aggressive, but Wayne loves them. I decided a while ago to find him a couple for Christmas. I couldn't find plain white goslings when I looked, but I found a pair who's about 18 months old. Probably better. They can have their own young here. Then we'll have to worry about catching goslings...

Meanwhile, one of the two ducklings on the dam yesterday disappeared. They wouldn't get out of the water while Kevin was working so it may have been a fatality of the work. This morning the other was gone as well. Maybe it got out and joined the nest. Maybe not.

On another, related note... while looking for duck nests I found a wren nest. Darn. I picked it up and looked inside. Tiny unfeathered babies, alive but seemed asleep. I put the nest back further over cause I knew we'd be disturbing it when we went for the duck again.

I checked it later, they were still alive. Hopefully mom found them and went back to them. I dread looking again... I may be responsible for more deaths.

So, here are the ducks yesterday afternoon (minus the mothers) looking over the dam works.

And here is the dam this morning, finished. The lower side has been reinforced so it won't leak (hopefully!!!) and we won't have the swampy problem we've always had below it. The top side has been lowered to allow water to flow into it when it rains.

 In theory, any excess water in the dam will now flow out on the other side, into the paddock and away from the house. That fence is the house yard fence. The house is only a few meters from there. That's how close to the house the dam is...

Meanwhile, Kevin has been working on the driveway.

This is yesterday morning when he'd first started. The plan is to make it so that water running off the hill doesn't just stream down the driveway, under the house and into the casita. Seriously, whoever designed this place had no brain. The house is at the bottom of a hill and in a valley... all rain runs off under our house, our lawn and down under the casita. We hope that with Kevin's help we can change things and direct the rain towards a drain, down the side of the driveway, into the drains on the side of the road. And away from the house.

Barney oversees the work being done.

I'll have more photos and updates after the work is finished.

Its been a very expensive project but one that really needed to be done. I really hope it works.

z