The Guinea Fowl Inn - open for business

Alright, now don’t fall off your chairs or out of your beds – but it’s me. Yes, really. See, all those reports of my untimely death have been greatly exaggerated. Again. Oh well, what can I say? I can but hang my head in shame at my neglected blog and tell you that mostly I’ve just not had the energy to blog and have spent the last month trying to get well. Does that sound like a reasonable enough excuse? It had better, it’s the only one I’ve got.

So, that aside, I have to report that the Guinea Fowl Inn is back in business. Yep, it’s that time of year and my newly planted lawn is once again going to pot as ravening hordes of guinea fowl and their keets come flocking through. The first lot that stopped by, half of them rescued from the neighbour’s pool (why she thought it was okay to fish them out and hand them to us over the wall is beyond me…), are already quite big and are getting their spots and starting to look ugly in that bulldog, I mean teenage guinea fowl, sort of way. The next lot all simply disappeared after the parents managed to get half over the other neighbour’s wall, and the Goddess Interfera (that’s me) gathered up the rest and popped them over too.

Once again, a garden full of guineas...

What's left of the first hatch of the year...

Mama hen and her brood (the third hatch)

Then I found about 10 freshly hatched keets in the driveway – no idea where they came from at all – and having opened the back gate, they all trooped through and until yesterday (a few losses aside) have been living in the garden. Three days after their arrival, a hen turned up with several older keets and they joined the other lot for communal guinea rearing, which, I believe, is how it happens in the wild. It was a joy to behold because the Goddess Interfera could sit back and let the blithering fowl get on with it. It’s honestly the first time I’ve seen effective guinea keet rearing – about 12 keets with approsimately 8 adults looking after them. The juvenile sparrowhawk hasn’t really got a look in.

Juvenile black sparrowhawk

He's only five months old...

How do I know? He's ringed and I contacted the bird society... I have his whole history!

It has to be said, if I’ve not made it clear before, guineas are generally useless parents. They stand on babies, lose babies, and abandon babies. Hence, I guess, the strategy of laying about 20 eggs, in the hope that without too much bother or parenting skills one or two will survive. I don’t know about you but it strikes me as highly inefficient.

This last lot of two flocks were doing really well until yesterday when what I can only assume was a rift in the space-time continuum opened up and left the garden bereft of any fowl at all. That’s right, they vanished. POOF! Just like that. It wasn’t like the youngest keets could actually fly (they’d only just started to realise they had wings but didn’t have a clue what to do with them), though they older ones started taking to the trees last week. One minute they were all there, the next, gone. Very disturbing. Couldn’t have been a predator, or we’d have heard the heckling and the parents couldn’t have been trying to get them over the wall, or we’d have heard the peeping. They just disappeared.

And then today, I heard peeping, opened the front gate and in trotted Mama with four keets. I’m guessing the space-time continuum opened, spewed out the chicks, burped and closed, having eaten three others for its supper. That’s the trouble with rifts, they want payment for services rendered. For my own part, I’m convinced it was a rift caused by the Large Hadron Collider as there is no other way those keets could have left the garden.

Still, I suppose stranger things have happened, like me doing this blog post - or maybe I too am in a parallel dimension and this is just… well, who knows…a mirage from within a singularity?

What? Are their pictures? Of course there are pictures… Way too many.

Two-day old guinea keets

Go on then, altogether now - aaaaaawwwww...

Three small peeps

Exploring

Little and Large...

Big cousins and little cousins

Uncle Rupert on the look out for the evil sparrowhawk...

Dinner with Great Uncle Stroppy

Gardening with Guineas...
A word of advice... Don't.

My favourite sequence of shots - Attacking the Evil Leek

Eyeballing the Leek...

Attack - operation one...

Aaaaaargh - pull now, men!!!

That's it, we're winnning...

It's exhausting work, this parenting business...

Zzzzzzzzzz...

Autumn days, and... Do you remember Ms Bo?

There’s a distinct and very chilly nip in the air as though the ice goblins are out there, ready to nibble off your toesies and fingies and nosies and the tips of your ears. It does not bode well. I think, despite the fact that the sky is blue and the sun is shining, we’re in for a bitterly cold winter. The Australian Cherry tree has blossomed, messily, three times so far. It is now so heavy with cherries that I’ve had to lop off branches that were hanging down into the driveway.

An abundance of pink

There is a dense sludge of cherries all over the driveway and the garden (we have three Australian Cherry trees). The last time the trees fruited prolifically it snowed on Table Mountain – which is pretty unheard of. This time there are even more cherries. The garden critters seem to know something too. We’re getting something like 30 guinea fowl turning up for food every morning. That usually only happens in deep midwinter. I think they’re storing up. The squirrels certainly are. They’re even burying grapes…

Young squirrel getting the hang of "gardening"...

They’ve bred in hordes this year, throughout the season and there are still nursing mothers out there.

Mama Squirrel - one of many...

There are even a few less welcome visitors out there pretending to be harvest mice…

Rat tales

Everything is gathering and stockpiling for winter. I’ve never seen activity quite like it. Even the predators are more prolific and determined than ever.

Juvenile gymogene in the gum tree- I'd never seen one before...

African Goshawk - now a regular - and very determined - visitor

The Silhouetted Hunt
- goshawk chasing the doves -

There are even trees and shrubs in the garden that are bearing berries and fruits that I’ve never seen bear anything other than leaves before. I might well find that I have to go into hibernation - and knit Ms Bo a woolly scarf…

And talking of Ms Bo…

You may well remember there once was a very small and abandoned baby guinea chick who looked like this…

Ms Bo shortly after we took her in...

Well, today Ms Bo is doing just fine, thank you.

Ms Bo, this morning...

She’s grown beautifully and is about three quarters of the way to being full size. For her age, she is still undersized, but on a good diet of mealworms – we’ve found a pet shop on the other side of town that sells them in large tubs of wriggliness – she’s done well. Her love-hate relationship with us persists. Going near her cage is enough to send all of us into a frenzy of nerves – she, as she beats herself against the sides of the pen, us as we worry about the damage she’ll do herself. The other day she manage to break the tip of her beak in one of her hysterical lathers. Not that it stopped her from snarfing the worms we had brought – once she was sure we were far enough away. The strange thing is that if she gets into the covered part of her “house”, she’s perfectly happy, once she’s done hissing, to be stroked into a gentle slumber.

Ms Bo and Friends

For the most part, she’s not short of company. For the last week there’ve been something like thirty guinea fowl – including the ever-present Ba-kaaka Nostra, hanging around in the garden. And that means the lawn looks like all hell where it’s been scratched over, dug up and had roosting holes planted in it. I suppose it is, at least, well fertilized… We’re hoping in the next month or so to be able to release Ms Bo – into the company of the Ba-Kaaka – but that will depend on what the avian vet thinks.

Ms Bo's new Beau - he's a bit of a silly bird, this one...
(Note the parental disapproval...)

The Ba-Kaaka Nostra - destroying the lawn, again...

The Guinea Fowl Chronicles: Here we go - AGAIN!!!

Ms Bo - whaddayamean, there are no more worms?!

I had nothing to do with it this time, honest, I didn’t. I was playing in the digital darkroom when I heard the garage door swing open. I expected D to come walking in but when he didn’t, I went out to investigate.
What greeted me was the sight of D standing in the driveway, his hands in his hair, muttering.
“They followed me in, I couldn’t stop them.” His words were accompanied by lots of small meeping sounds.
“They were waiting for me,” he said, shaking his head, “I swear they were. I opened the gate, drove in and as I was about to close the gate, there they all were, walking in.”
“Open the gate again,” I said, “And let’s see if they’ll all walk out.”
D opened the gate. Mama Guinea gave him a long look, peered out into the road, turned tail and headed up the driveway, trailed by peeps.
Well, what can I say, we have fluffball blessings again. 13 of them when they arrived but I’m not going to try and keep count this time, it’s just too stressful.
They are tiny, smaller, I swear, than when Bo and her family first arrived back in October, and some are still quite wobbly on their little pins.
So here we go again – exit a neat and tidy garden, enter loads of pooh and scratched up soil all over the paving. Goodbye garden service, hello stress and mayhem. Ho and hum.
And for those of you cooing and laughing right now, I say “humph!” - may the bluebird of happiness fly overhead and do just what flying bluebirds do. I swear if I could but find the sign that says, “Guinea Fowl Sanctuary and Orphanage – All Welcome”, I’d pull it down. I’d put up one that says, “Inn Full, innkeepers knackered – try next door”.
Bo is beside herself with all the new life – behaving like a maiden aunt on speed. Who knows where it will all end. At least I can say, by way of an update on Missy Bo, that she’s growing, her wings are getting stronger and she’s pigging out on D’s cultivar of maggots and mealworms.

I leave you with pictures to tell the rest of the story.

Small peeps arrive in the driveway...

Portrait of a Guinea keet...

Guineas find their way into the garden...

Wha'!? Oh no! Not more!

Guineas, en famille...

Ms Bo looks on

Il Madonna del giardino - Mother and Child

The Menagerie...

Fluffball Blessings

King of the castle...

I arrived home the other day to find the verge swarming with very small peeps... the first hatch of guinea fowl of the season! And a very special hatch indeed. You may recall some months ago I told you about arriving home just after we'd been married to find a new flock of guineas in the garden, and how they'd sung to us. Well, it was the same crowd. A double blessing.

A lot of small peeps clustered on the verge

I drove in, parked the car, grabbed the camera and dashed outside, leaving the side gate open. And as I snapped, so the small peeps all hurried through the gate... the parents calling them in from the top of the wall. That was on Monday and since then I've been a veritable Mother Hen.

Have we got them all?

Trying out wings and jumps

Wait for me, Mum

I think I've learned more about guinea fowl behaviour in the last six days than I have in seven years of living here.

Small peep

One sad thing, which I've long known, is that the mortality rate for guinea chicks is very high. Predators aside, it's like the little spark just goes out in some of them and they simply keel over. I've already buried one who did just that. Resultantly, the hen lays a huge number of eggs, up to 20, and if the flock is lucky, they'll raise three or five to adulthood. As it was, this flock started off with 19 or 20 (they are very tricksy to count!) and we almost immediately went down to 17. Numbers seem to have stabilised for the moment, but not without some intervention on my part.

Feeding frenzy

For example, the other day, the whole lot hopped over the little wooden poled garden border into the shrubbery, except for one small peep who just couldn't make the 12cm jump. And when he did try, he promptly managed to hang himself in the gap between two poles. Poor mite just hung there as I rushed out, gathered him up (peeping furiously) and returned him to his family.

I wonder... if I jump...?

The pool is always a worry, it's a death trap to small creatures at the best of times, and I'm constantly checking it to make sure no one has fallen in. It was bad enough having to fish out a very drowned shrew this morning.

The greatest threat comes from the black sparrowhawk who hunts doves in the garden. He's a young male and has already figured that there are fine pickings to be had. Yesterday morning he swooped and circled, coming in really low to eye out the chicks. For now, I imagine they're too small to be of much interest, but as soon as they reach dove size and bigger, they will be at huge risk. I don't mind the sparrowhawk feeding on plump, corn-fed and peanut-buttered doves, but I am going to have serious views about him picking off the guinea chicks!

Three in a row

The male guineas in the flock of five have become terribly territorial and the guineas that usually feed in the garden are having a particularly hard time. Fights break out whenever other males get too close and one poor female, who seems particularly broody but has no young of her own, gets seen off with some serious pecks. The pair that seem to live here, have moved from the main garden to the driveway where they are looking decidedly sorry for themselves.

Fight!

It's my territory. Do you have something to say about that?

I've also discovered that guinea chicks in need of a nap go up to mum and butt her chest with their heads, much in the way puppies or lambs nudge their mothers for milk. At this point the mother settles herself down and all the chicks crowd beneath her. How she manages to fit 17 littlies beneath her wings, is beyond me. And every evening, she gathers them up, heads for the corner of the herb garden and buries herself between the asparagus fern and the ivy and settles in for the night, not a chick in sight.

A downy bed

Is there room for me under there?

Mum's the tent

As for the squirrels, well, they've been trying to work out what it's all about. The young males are really not sure what to make of it, or even how to get round a mass of guinea chicks. Yesterday one, in a fit of consternation, simply took one huge leap and jumped over the lot!

Wha'! Wozzat?!

The lizards seem to be the worst affected... One poor critter was chased out from under the lavender and narrowly escaped with his life (by taking refuge behind the potted geraniums) as then entire guinea family descended on him, sharp beaks pecking furiously.

As for my garden... all the seedlings I planted two weeks ago are scratched and squashed. I'll be lucky if a single foxglove or dahlia makes it into being a full grown plant - it's a good thing that as of last year I opted to forego bedding plants and put in mostly small shrubs and perrenials. As for the lawn, it is in dire need of mowing and the paving in even more dire need of sweeping, but for now, I'm letting it all go a bit wild so as not to disturb my guests.

The big hit is the waterbowl...

As I type this, the family are clustered at the patio door, peeping and chirping and singing. I imagine that pretty soon one or two small peeps are going to venture indoors - and that will mean more fun and games!

Roosting in the sun

En famille in the garden