I'm back - and the guinea fowl chronicles continue...

A family visit

So... did ya miss me? Not too much, I hope?! Well, I'm back. In one piece, much mended - still a bit achey but nothing remotely drastic. A week of physiotherapy saw me right and let me tell you, being one handed for a week - with the non-dominant hand - was no fun at all. Mind you, it's good for weight loss - couldn't cook and struggled to eat.

I owe Karen over at Border Town Notes a meme - don't worry, I haven't forgotten, I'll do it next post.

Meanwhile a quick update on Ms Bo - who is definitely a Ms now that we can tell her voice. By that I mean this: female guineas go "ba-kaak", male guineas just make a "chi chi chi" sound which sounds a lot like machine gun fire. Ms Bo is making small and sweet ba-kaak sounds. At least that's confirmed.

Her family, who've been absent for a good few weeks finally turned up again last week. Yikes! You should see the size of her two remaining siblings. Huge. More than double her size, and not far off adult size - you can see for yourself...

So much bigger than me...

He ain't heavy, he's my brother...

You can tell from the pics how small, by comparison, little Bo Peep is. Worrying. However, I'm told by the rather wonderful man over at the Guinea Fowl International Association, who has kinda of befriended me - or rather Ms Bo, I suspect! - that even keets (chicks) which are slow to develop like this, can still make it. Our zoologist friend echoes the sentiment. True, in the wild, Ms Bo would not have survived, but there's no reason for her not to make it, living the protected and cosseted life with us. So yes, this means we are still grubbing in the compost for bugs and worms and Ms Bo has an insatiable appetite. However, it seems to be a case of trying to find the balance. I'm kinda hoping that now that the International Guinea Fowl Association have found us (oh yay for the great interwebby thing!), they will offer advice on what we need to do - even though Ms Bo is a wild bird and most of their birds are captive bred. And I have to tell you, I didn't realise there so many different "looks" for guinea fowl!

Meanwhile, in case you're wondering if it's snowing down here, it is most certainly not.

Collared Dove taking a cooling dip in the water feature!

Yesterday was 35 degrees C! and we woke up this morning to a mountain swathed in smoke and the smell of bush fire drifting on the breeze. My kitchen counter tops are covered in ash but I can't see where the fire actually is because the mountain is mostly obscured by the smoke. I think it's going to be a bad summer in this regard, it just feels like the mountain is ready to go up in flames. I do so hope people having picnics on the mountain will be careful.