A Wee Day Out

I never used to worry about leaving this place unattended. Just get in the vehicle and drive away with never a thought. These days it is all careful locking up, anxieties about the pigs and hens, maybe somebody coming on to the yard, stealing tools, equipment, plants. It must be something to do with getting older. And it is part of the reason that Nellybert outings are too few and far between.

But today we went out for breakfast, a plant delivery to Montrose, a trip to the supermarket and a jaunt to McNeill's in Broughshane for bird food. 

As I remarked to Bert the other day, the wee boys' grocery bill is nearly as much as our own - the amount we are spending on mixed seed, nyger seed and sunflower hearts and that's us with a field full of grasses going to seed at the front of the house, it is little wonder the wee boys are becoming so numerous.

This one has just left the nest. Both parents spent half an hour toing and froing from the fat ball cage feeding it titbits. Bert wondered about the other nestlings but I reckoned this one, the first out, was their pride and joy, their big hope for the future and they were going to put the effort in. Even if it killed them.

We returned from our jaunt to find the place unburgled, unburnt, and unflooded. The wee boys had their feeders loaded and it seems that they prefer the grub they get from Ronnie in Portglenone to Jimmy's in Broughshane. They'll have to get used to it though as we bought 20kg.

The only thing was, we seem to have lost a hen. Maybe Foxy. I'll know for sure at bedtime.

Tomorrow I'm going out again, first to pick up Jazzer and go to lunch, then pick up the schoolies. It's going to be a fun day.

Solace and Sorrow

Is there anyone who hasn't turned to the natural world for comfort during this awful pandemic? Even though the frigging virus is also a part of that same natural world. 

I was feeling really flat yesterday and forced myself to go do some polytunnel pottering to cheer myself up when I heard the pheasant squawk. 

Must go fetch the camera and see if I can capture it. Will be a change from my millions of pictures of finches and collared doves. But when I got back the pheasant had turned into...

...a hare! The first one I've ever spotted around here. I took a few quick shots then fetched Bert. He just managed to see it before it disappeared into the wood. He said it has been decades since there have been hares in these fields. 

It really cheered me up to have seen it and I spent a contented half-hour sowing nasturtiums and beans. 

No more sightings or squawks from the pheasant so I decided to take a dander towards the wood, camera at the ready. No pheasants here, just a quick glimpse of a red fox disappearing into the trees. No photograph to prove I saw it. No time. Now I was even more delighted. Until I considered that, although Fox is a beautiful animal, it will be hungry and pheasants and hares may need to take care.  

It is only a small sorrow that the fox might eat the foolish pheasant. It would be a rare thing if it killed an adult hare but foxes will kill and eat entire leveret populations. 

Bert and I were discussing this when he remarked,

Y'know, I haven't seen any buzzards around for a while. I wonder if some sheep farmer is poisoning them?

Last week we'd found a dead buzzard at the edge of the wood which Bert thought might have been poisoned.

My mood plunged. What if someone was systematically poisoning the buzzards? I felt hatred towards that someone. And couldn't stop dwelling on it. The country is full of sheep at the moment and some sheep farmers believe that buzzards kill newborn lambs. They don't, although are known to feed on dead or stillborn lambs. 

So there we are. Nature isn't all primroses and songbirds. It's horror and death and bastard farmers flailing hedges, cutting down trees and poisoning birds of prey.

 

I did eventually see that stupid pheasant. But not today. When I told Hannah about the fox she said,

Oh good! There will soon be some interesting bones in the wood.

I called her a ghoul.

Hannah's shrine of bones

 

The buzzard's feet

Red dot: dead buzzard

White dot: Hannah's bone shrine

Blue dot: Where the hare sat

Orange dot: The fox

 

Foxes, Moths and Bluebells

My legs hurt, and have been sore now for sixteen days. Most nights I wake up with cramp, sometimes very painful. Because of this, I am taking shorter walks, usually 30-40 minutes in the woods every evening. Holly de Cat likes this walk too as do the dogs. A few evenings ago we saw Foxy there, handsome, fast and red as fire with a white-tipped tail. I've noticed too, a few patches of bluebells here and there. Maybe in years to come, they will spread and it will become a bluebell wood. I'll not see it but am glad to have seen the possibility of it.

I realised today that having one's own woods and bluebells puts us on a par with the likes of Mr Cummings although I suspect his family's woods covers more ground and has many more bluebells. Ours is far from the road and it would be unlikely that anyone would ever spot us breaking lockdown there.

Disappointing catch in the light trap this morning. Eight White Ermines and nothing else so I was pleased when Bert called me to ask what the moth on the sunroom door was. He held some white paper behind it and I got this photograph. It's not very good but a picture helps with identification. It might be a Common Pug. I'm not sure. The trap is in a different part of the garden tonight so maybe I'll see something interesting tomorrow. It sure gets me out of bed in the morning, checking, taking pictures and recording. Even with my stiff crampy legs and even before I make coffee.

Busy, Busy Day

Two trips to the dentist. Please don't ask. And in between a woodland walk and lunch with first daughter.

Then an evening chat with second daughter, the Norfolk one. There were also brief convos with Anglo-Irish grandchildren, James and Emily. James and I discussed trampolines and I'm not sure what Emily and I were talking about. She might have blown me a raspberry.

Third daughter got her foxy door knocker screwed on.

An Urban Fox relocates to Cullybackey

Now she's in with the hipster-crowd on Columbia Road, E2.

Then Bert and I watched The Holocaust Memorial Day Commemorative Service which was dignified and moving. Even hopeful.

Afterwards, I said,

From now on I'm not letting anyone, anyone at all get away with saying anything racist, sectarian or sexist. What should I say to anyone who does say anything like that?

He says,

Tell them they should be affronted at themselves.

And then?

Tell them that they are the sort of people who would have stood by and let genocide happen.

Screaming At The Moon

It's the Wolf Moon tonight, the first full moon of the year and so-called because wolves howl a lot at this time of the year. There was also a penumbral lunar eclipse but too much cloud cover to see anything. It would have been better observed had it been last night when skies were clear and the moon, nearly full, was beautiful. No howling wolves here but foxes woke me from sleep with their screeching and screaming. It was close to the house, maybe as near as the orchard and when I opened the window I could hear twigs and branches snapping so maybe in the overgrown wilderness behind Hannah's rooms. 

I listened for a while. They were much too close to the chicken run for my liking although the hens were securely locked up. But, mating season and they were preoccupied with other matters. Hens were unperturbed as were the dogs. I closed the window and returned to bed. Excitement over.

Then dreamed an amusing dream about fervent Unionists rallying against Nationalism. A purple car containing Shinners was driving around Ballymena terrorising the locals. The Orange Order was mobilised, a pipe band skirled up and down Wellington Street and people strode purposefully around costumed as B Specials, WWI volunteers and nurses. There might have been wooden guns. My role was to pour oil on troubled waters, to bolster confidence, to explain that things weren't as bad as they thought. There was also something about working in a hairdressing shop in Harryville and wanting to give up the position, but feeling that I needed the money and then remembering that I was a pensioner and need never go out to work again. That was a relief. 

I woke up to Judy's cold, nudging nose and this gorgeous morning sky and...

wallflower in bloom. In January?

In Which Bert Is A Great Big Tease

LAST WEEK

Evie told me that Bert calls her pink booster seat a 'wedding chair'.

I said,

Why does he say that?

He says I'm too big for it. He says I'll still be sitting on it when I go to my wedding.

Well, that's not very nice of him. What did you say?

I told him I'm not even going to have a wedding. It costs too much money. I'm just going to live with somebody.

YESTERDAY

A sad day for hens. One died of natural causes and four by a fox. Needless to say, all roosters survived. Bert saw the arrogant brute this morning and considered shooting him but decided not to. We were letting the hens out to wander the yard every afternoon so our fault.

TODAY

We took Martha and Evie for dinner at the Pizza Parlour. It has changed hands and moved premises but the pizzas are still as good as ever. Bert ordered a large anchovy and olive and was almost beaten by it. I said, "Why don't you take a little break, then go back to it?" He said, "Yeah. That's what Italians do." I said, "And while they're taking their break they slip out of the restaurant and whack someone." He said, "While everyone else in the restaurant laughs loudly at silly jokes and no-one hears a thing."

Full disclosure, we just watched The Irishman, then GoodFellas, Bert for the fourth time, me for the first. I'd only ever caught the scene where Christopher from The Sopranos got his foot shot at by Joe Pesci, so sorry Italian-Americans for the lazy stereotyping, blame Martin Scorsese.

JUST NOW

Whilst uploading the Pizza Parlour photos from my phone I came across one on the family WhatsApp page, shared by my brother, a photograph of his beautiful first grandchild who died in September. There will have to be a new kind of Christmas in Ava's family, one where there will always be someone very special missing. It's going to be hard.

When Bertie Met Foxy

While I was away Bert had an interesting encounter with Foxy. On that day the big field had just been cut for silage so he gathered up the .22 and headed out the back lane to see if Foxy was out catching frogs. And sure enough, there he was, sauntering through the freshly cut field.

Bert crouched down behind the hedge and raised the gun. He had the vicious chicken killer in his sights. Judy and Jess saw Foxy too, sat on their haunches and stared at him through the five-bar gate. Foxy sat down and gazed coolly back. And all Bert had to do was squeeze the trigger. He waited, and waited. The dogs watched the fox and the fox watched the dogs. He was the same dark red fox that had been in the hen run, the same big fellow that Bert and the dogs had spotted a few times previously.

We don't know why Judy and Jess don't go after him. Perhaps he mesmerises them. Maybe he is even that same fox that Fred encountered on the back lane five years ago. 

Then Bert stood up and Foxy got up too, looked at the man with the gun then turned on his heel and trotted back to the woods.

Bert is not entirely sure why he didn't shoot Foxy. A good few of our friends reckoned he should have squeezed the trigger and about as many again said he was right to let him go. He felt he made the right call. I think so too.

Rethinking Foxes

I encouraged Bert to go visit Paddy in the Old Folk's Home today as I needed to get my head showered.

Getting one's head showered features in this Van Morrison number. It's a Northern Ireland thing.

He took the dogs with him (not Roy) as he intended to take a long walk afterwards. When he got back he told me he'd walked the fields around Maxwellswalls where his mother's people had come from. He started off at his mother's home place. It's not being farmed now and has turned in to a beautiful wilderness. He spotted one lizard, ten hares (he counted them as the dogs raised them) and an old dog fox with raggedy ears.

While he was communing with nature on the land his family once owned (they don't any more and there hangs an interesting tale) I weeded, planted vegetable and annual flower plugs, home grown. An enjoyable evening indeed. When Bert returned he was excited to tell me about the critters he had seen. He also reported that the dogs had got very excited about the hares but had taken the fox in their stride.

I've been rethinking foxes. After the last raids on our chickens, six lost altogether, I was raging, got Bert to keep the gun handy in case the cheeky bastard turned up in the yard or round about. Although we both had misgivings as it was cubbing season. An adult fox killed can mean slow starvation for the young ones. Then last Monday I spotted a fox cub dead at the side of the road, close to our lane. For some crazy reason I dwelt on it all day. And then I thought about foxes for the rest of the week. This is my conclusion. Foxes are just pesky but they deserve to have their lives. If they get my chickens it is because I'm not looking after them properly. I'm going to try very hard to keep the run fox proof and if one of my feather-brained flock jumps the fence because she just hates to lay her eggs along with the other hens and Foxy finds her, well, that's just one of those things. Foxes just be foxy, chickens be stupid and humans just need to make the best fences they can. Ours don't have the huge run they did before. They have an enclosure within an enclosure but it is still a lot bigger than most chickens enjoy.

Long run the fox. And I really mean that.

Interestingly Ganching has also been blogging about foxes.

One Week Later

Taken just after the first attack. Three more would fall victim to Bastard Fox.

Part of the reason I write this blog is to remind myself what is going on in my life. When did I have the cataract operation? Look it up on the blog. Just over four weeks ago. When was the last time the fox got into the hen run? That would be in July 2012, and in the month of May 2008 and 2009. The May attacks were bad ones and, like this year, would most likely have been carried out by an adult fox with cubs to feed. We thought that the 2012 attack was a junior for on that occasion the hen survived.

This time we lost five in three separate incidents. Reminds me of Lady Bracknell for to lose two is unfortunate, five seems careless. Here's what happened. We kept them in the day after the first two were attacked. Foxy was interrupted and only got a bite or two of the rooster. Bert sprayed the weeds and brambles around the fence to see where it needed reinforcement. That was going to take a day or two to sort out. The day after I felt so sorry for them not getting out to forage and grub that I let them out and put Rusty and Lily in with them to deter Foxy. That worked. Foxy was not going to go into an enclosure with two great pigs in it. Had he done so I am certain that the pigs would have not paid him a bit of attention. I've mentioned before that pigs are rough and they managed to dislodge part of the chicken shed. It was the part that provided an escape route under the house. Two hens disappeared. We heard or saw absolutely nothing. I assume they went into the tangled undergrowth that lies between our place and the derelict, overgrown property next door. Where a fox was waiting. We were down to ten hens.

I had a plan. We would move them back to the old run, the one that no fox had entered for three years. We would do it on the following day after I had returned from some business in Ballymena and after a thorough inspection of the perimeter. Bert was in a hurry to get it done and persuaded me to move them before I left. He said he had sorted out the perimeter himself. With the help of a friend we moved the ten hens to their new home and I headed into town. Three hours later I returned to the news that the fox had got in and killed one of my favourite chickens, a big silvery grey girl.

The remaining nine have been closed in ever since and I feel so sorry for them. Bert is going away next week and there is not enough time to strengthen security. We'll get something sorted when he comes back.

He saw the brute yesterday at the edge of the wood. It gave him a cool stare. The gun was in the house.

Murder in the Chicken Run

When a rooster flies at you and puts his spurs into your leg, you notice it. This fellow was a big heavy lad and he ruled the roost. I'm going to miss hearing him crow tomorrow morning.

Yep! Foxy got into the hen run this evening, killed my beautiful rooster and one of the new chickens. He (or she)  dug a way under the fence from the garden of the derelict house next door. He'd already killed the big fellow and was making off with the hen. Bert gave chase and Foxy was unable to get his prize under the fence. So he didn't get his dinner. Bert had to pull the poor hen's neck as she wasn't completely dead.

I miss my lost roosters more than my hens. They may not lay eggs but they have bigger characters. I need to get another one and I need to make sure the damnable fox doesn't find it so easy to get into the run. Bert went out with the gun but saw no sign of it. I'm in two minds about killing them because I'd be thinking of hungry cubs. And Evie wouldn't be pleased. She's in the fox camp.

And from Hannah's perspective - this.

Photo by ZMB

Farewell Madam Black

When we moved the chickens over the yard, one of them, a a Jersey Giant, refused to lay her eggs in the new house. Every other day she'd fly over the wire, make her way to the old hen house, lay one, then saunter back. We started to call her Madam Black because she was so proud and independent. For some reason she could never fly back to the hen run. She used to hang around the gate until someone let her back in.

Then she stopped going to the old chicken house. She had a nest somewhere among the hay bales and she'd access it by the scrubby trees behind the shed. We'd have to go in there, catch her and return her to the run. The odd night she stayed in the barn. It wasn't going to end well. She was missing this morning and this is all that was left of her. Foxy and the cubs will have had a very good meal.

Poor Madam Black. I'm going to miss her proud ways. But we won't miss her eggs as we never did find her nest. As the bales come out it will reveal itself and those eggs will be stinking.

To Flickr, on the 16th of April. No interesting photograph today as it was here before. This is the 16th most viewed, clematis florida "Sieboldii". Ain't it pretty? 924 views. I don't think there are any in stock these days.

The Fox and the Cat

Oh Hannah! Eight days after your birthday and I never did give you a greeting like I did in 2009.

But, as you know, life does suck sometimes and, if it didn't suck - sure then, we'd never appreciate the good times.

Good times like when we get to see that incredibly dangerous creature - the fiery red fox (beware the fox you foolish chickens and Michelle.)

It was sad you didn't have your camera with you - but then, what camera could capture an image so wonderful as the beautiful illustration of Janusz Grabianski?

Khail And The Fox

Last weekend Khail van Niekerk, 19, from South Africa did his very best to avoid hitting a fox whilst driving back from work. The fox survived but the car rolled. Khail did a lot of damage to his left arm and is currently up in Antrim Area Hospital awaiting a transfer to Dundonald for a skin graft. N. So Khail you're experiencing a lot of what Norn Iron has to offer including the NHS. K: I could have done without that experience thank you very much. N. I suppose the food is very good. K. It is the worst food I've ever had in my life. I couldn't eat a bite of it. I'm expecting to lose quite a bit of weight while I'm here. N: But I'm sure you're enjoying all the pretty nurses fussing over you. K: Pretty! You must be joking! They're all ancient old women over 30 and they all waddle about. They're not a bit like nurses are supposed to be. N. You'll be pleased with the Yazoo chocolate milk I brought you. K: Indeed I am not. Next time can you bring me a big J?