Ducklings and other critters

The day started overcast and drizzley, we had some much needed rain overnight and the flowers were all perky, with the exception of the peonies which always look so bedraggled after a rain.   Since it was too wet to work outside I mopped the floors then drove to town on the back road for a newspaper.  A doe with two young fawns meandered across the road in front of me.  She was in no big hurry and I fumbled to get my camera out of the case but I had it on close-up focus and before I could switch it to landscape they had disappeared over the hill of a corn field they were in.  I get pretty decent flower pictures but animal pictures elude me.

A woodchuck was in the road further down the way, eating something in the road.  He moved as the car came close but when I came back there he was nibbling on the dirt in the road.  I don’t know what they nibble on in the road; I see it all the time.  All I can think of is that it’s salt from the stuff they put on to settle the dust.  They don’t salt the dirt roads in the winter, but I think they brine them in the summer.   It was just the kind of overcast morning that keeps the wildlife out and about.

Baby Muscovy ducklings

It’s been a better week on the farm as far as birds go, a duck hatched 14 ducklings Wednesday and a turkey hatched at least one chick yesterday.   I was going to throw her eggs out and make her start over so she hatched something in the nick of time.  I put a divider in the corner of the barn where she was sitting to protect the baby for a few days.  The ducklings went in a pen with their mom.    Last year the cats were still young and they didn’t bother the babies too much, but they have a whole season of hunting behind them and they kill things as large as rabbits so I am a bit leery.

The other two turkey hens have nests started with some eggs but aren’t sitting good yet.  The red hen has eggs in a dog house close to the barn but the bronze hen went a ways out along the fence line under the flowering quince to make a nest.  I just hope nothing gets their eggs as we have an egg eater again.  I put a pail of eggs I removed from the frizzles, they had some 50 eggs in one nest again , just outside the barn door last night and this morning a lot of them had been eaten. 

We have noticed a decrease in table eggs again and I had set up a radio to come on at 6 am to scare whatever is coming in the barn off.   It has to come after the hens lay in the morning and before I get out there in the am.  I am slow getting outside in the morning, I am not a morning person to begin with and then I have arthritis which makes me stiff and sore in the morning.  I hate to keep killing critters which are just trying to feed themselves but I will not feed chickens just to buy store eggs.   We have smelled skunk a few nights and I worry that if I set a trap I just might catch one instead of a possum.   I am going to buy a trail camera; I need to know what is eating the eggs. 

I have a hen sitting on 6 eggs in the hen nest boxes.  I marked the eggs with a marker and remove any new ones, which still get laid in there for some reason, despite that there are plenty of nest boxes.  She had 7 to begin with, but something got one of those.  Yet the duck who was on the floor under the nest boxes sitting, managed to hatch 14 ducklings with several eggs left over.

Another critter problem is the squirrels.  I came into the porch one evening and heard something scratching in an aluminum garbage can that I store the wild bird feed in.  I opened the lid to see 3 tiny baby red squirrels.  Now the squirrels are a big problem for us, they are in the attic and dropping nuts into our sewer vent pipes and getting into the furnace room etc.  They aggravate me no end.  But here were these teeny babies looking at me with their big eyes.  I don’t know how they got in there.  I had taken sunflower seeds out earlier in the day, but had closed the lid, obviously not well enough.  Two were able to get out but the last tiny one needed help, so I stuck the broom handle in there for him to climb.  Back they went into my ceiling, leaving walnuts in the garbage can for some reason, maybe a trade.  I should have killed them or let the dogs do it, but I just turned soft, looking at their baby cuteness.

A day later I was out working in the yard next to the hollow catalpa tree the squirrels favor and down comes a baby squirrel.  He was coming awfully close to me as I worked, as if he trusted me, I like to think it was the one I helped.  Most of the red squirrels are very wary and mean as hell.  This one was crossing to the bird feeder to get sunflower seeds and coming back to the tree without being afraid or scolding me.  That one is probably not long for the world, as they say, he was too trusting or naïve.    Maybe his momma left him and his siblings early.  I warned them when I let them live following the trash can incident that was the last time I would give them a free pass.

Then there is Fluffy’s kitten.  She had one kitten in a chicken nest box close to a month ago.  After about a week I saw her carry it over the fence into a fenced off pile of old fence and other junk.  I haven’t seen it since, though I suspected she was still nursing, a couple days ago I heard it mew as she went over the fence.  I worry about the poor little thing, alone so much of the time.   Fluffy is a friendly cat, you would think she would bring her baby closer to home.  The other female has her 4 kittens, a week younger, in a box right in the middle of the barn.  They seem just fine. 

House bird update, the female parakeet died.  I have no idea how old she was and she was probably injured when the dogs overturned their cage chasing a night invader who entered through the screen in my office where the birds are.  They didn’t catch whatever it was but the parakeets ended up on the floor under their seed cups.  She had not seemed healthy since then.   I moved “miss always ready to nest” canary with the old male after she laid 4 more eggs in the cage I had put her in by herself to rest.  And I moved old guy Petey and her across the room from her old flame.   She is quite busy building a new nest.   Now if she will accept Petey as her mate we may still get babies. Neither of the other 2 canary hens is interested in nesting it seems.