Drama with hens....

OK it's more me being a Drama Queen than the hens it has to be said, and all ended well in case you were wondering. But this morning I went out to feed the hens (and barn cat, Charlie) and found the hen that I knew had hatched eggs yesterday was out sunning herself and her chicks. Fortunately Charlie is more keen (at the moment) on tinned cat food than the two legged ball of fluff variety - particularly as he'd have to get past a very aggressive hen. So I fed him and turned my attention to the Mother Hen and her chicks.

She has some very cute ones, my favourite are the brown fluffy ones that look like sparrows! These must be her own eggs, the others will be eggs laid by other hens.  Because that's what hens do - they appropriate eggs! Or at least several hens will lay eggs in a nest and one will decide to brood them.

 Well I was trying to count the chicks and thought she had nine, but it's hard to tell as they kept running about! Anyway I left them some food and left them to their sunbathing.

Later this afternoon I heard the strimmer working outside and looked out to see my neighbour strimming the grass near the henny house which had got overlong. It was actually getting difficult to get into the henny house - human OR hen, never mind chick.  But I was rather alarmed as I knew that the older chicks that hatched about five weeks ago often hid in the long grass.

These chicks have now been abandoned by their own mother and left to fend for themselves. This isn't as bad as it sounds, as the hen teaches the chicks to feed themselves at only a few days old. But of course they no longer have the hen to protect them from predators.  So they seem to stay, quite sensibly, around the long grass.

So I trotted down to speak to Neighbour and asked him to stop while I located the chicks. "Oh" he said "it's OK there are three of them in the hen house.".  Here's the drama queen bit - because of course I said there should be NINE. "Nobody move" I said and started looking for chicks in the grass.  Then I went into the hen house to check on the hen and chicks and...... it was a DIFFERENT hen with completely different chicks that also look only about a day old!!  This hen had been sitting in the barn....... So I do a few more histrionics of "Oh god, oh god, where are the chicks" and went in search of the other new brood..... they were with the hen who was rather indignant and standing in the barn. At which point my neighbour told me I couldn't count because she has ELEVEN chicks, not nine as I had thought..... All were well so I then had to hunt for the adolescent ones - they were hanging about in the other barn, rather like adolescents hanging about on a street corner..... I suspect ASBO's (anti-social behaviour orders) to be served on them any day now.....

Anyway with all livestock accounted for (9 five-week old chicks, 11 day-old with one hen, 3 day-old with another hen, and the rest of the flock), my neighbour then continued to strim the grass to at least enable week chicks to get into the henny house, but leave enough of the cow parsley and long grass for them to also hide from predators......

I am going to lie down in a darkened room after all that excitement.... and await MORE chicks as there are at least two more hens brooding somewhere in the barn (completely inaccessible.....).

The cockerel, meanwhile, is strutting about and giving me a look which clearly says "Harumph and you thought I wasn't a working model!".  I told him it was the hens that had done all the work and to take the smug look off his face....

Meanwhile, having a final check of the hen house just now, here are the adolescents on their perch with the new mum below, you can just see the head of a wee chick peeping out from under her chest.  The other new mum is back where she hatched her chicks tonight. I'm hoping, if all is quiet tomorrow, she'll take them into the henny hoose too.....

Bumble at the Lighthouse...

This is a picture of the wee "caddy" lamb at the lighthouse. She's been bottle fed having been orphaned, and the children at the lighthouse have been leading her around with a collar and lead. The other orphan lambs have gone back into the flock but as she's become such a "pet" she's being kept back till she's a wee bit bigger. Meanwhile she's living down at the lighthouse at the back of one of the houses there and apparently wakes the children up in the morning shouting for her breakfast!

I met Bumble today when I went down to the post office which is in the garden at the lighthouse. Yes Graemsay has it's own post office even though we are an island of only 26.  And yes we have our own postman too - he lives at the lighthouse.  Post office opening hours Monday and Friday from something like 7.30am to 8.30am - I'm vague about the time as I am highly unlikely to be awake enough to want to even *visit* a post office at that time of the morning! Fortunately the post office is also open on a Wednesday from 11.30 to about 12.30, and that's when I pay a visit! Unlike post offices in most towns, you are not likely to encounter a queue at ours :-)

Today I also had some visitors from "south" - well Aviemore in the Highlands. V & G hadn't been to Orkney for about 12 years and this was also their first visit to Graemsay. Fortunately the sun shone upon us and we went for a walk along the beach and up to the old Quarry.

This evening I was working in the garden and heard the sound of cattle "shouting" - lots of bellowing from cows and calves. I looked up to see some cattle being moved onto fresh pasture. I love watching this - the cattle trot about and the calves gallop around. Eventually all settle down to grazing on fresh grass - happy cattle.  I heard the bull mumbling too (well OK a low kind of mooing), I think he was just checking all his ladies were present!

There have been some lovely sunsets this past week, the one below was from Monday - it looks blurred but actually that is the tide moving (honest!).

Wild flowers.....

....Don't expect this to be an informative post! I only know half a dozen wild flowers and they are REALLY common!  But today Julian Branscombe, of the Scapa Flow Landscape Partnership, came over and led a walk looking at Graemsay wild flowers.  We started down at the old croft of Quoys, which has a burn running beside it, and old, mostly native (to Orkney) trees. Probably the only patch of native trees on Graemsay. I love going down to the old croft house and hearing the sound of the "babbling brook".

Anyway, here is Julian explaining the finer points of....um.... a plant....oooh I remember now, it was a "wild" variety of forget-me-not.... I think......

There were also tree ferns (no not the tropical ones!), these really are ferns that grow on trees (well on Graemsay they do anyway).

 And one of my favourites - a moss covered tree.

Then there was "hay rattle" (ok a bit blurry)

This is Ladies Smock

This one is a potentilla (the wild variety not the cultivated garden one).

And this is a wee Water Sprite!

Sunshine....

Temperatures in Orkney have been somewhat below "average" for June, rather like the rest of the UK. But we have had sunshine, and the buttercups are doing well!

 This is Sandside beach, lots of sand! This is about 100 yards from my front door.  Bliss!

And this is the view from my "back door" - the henny hoose is at the end of the "lawn".

Garden flowers

The flower borders in the walled garden are coming along. I'm really pleased with the "wild flower" feel of one border in particular (photo above). I am a very impatient gardener, I want everything growing in abundance immediately, and as all gardeners know, nature doesn't work that way.

Currently the Dame's Rocket, geraniums and verbascum are growing taller than the weigelia, but it's time will come!

Still, I have to remind myself that the garden has come a long way since this...... (please note the sheep is *sleeping*, not dead! No animals were harmed in the making of this garden!!). The borders were only planted up in Summer 2009, so it will take a while for the trees and shrubs to get established.

Button enjoys accompanying me to inspect the flowers daily. Here she is doing the usual cat thing of dealing with vertical slopes without any hesitation....

Mostly though she enjoys a little sun worship!

And of course the new bench is an ideal vantage point to watch birdies and butterflies......

St Magnus Festival footnote : If you read my recent posts, last Saturday I went to a rather odd performance as part of the MagFest, the fringe theatre element of the festival. I've just read a review of the performance when it was performed at the Barbican in London in 2010 - thank goodness it wasn't just me then that didn't "get it"!  Don't get me wrong, I *love* "alternative" theatre performances. When I lived in London I frequented mostly fringe theatre rather than the big "shows".  A performance which had a huge impact on me was Samuel Beckett's "Not I", and "Waiting for Godot" is my all time favourite. But THIS performance was just bizarre with nothing to recommend it.  And most of the audience I heard talking about it felt the same, and it isn't that Orkney audiences are "unsophisticated"!  I'm probably more disappointed that I saw something that didn't work well for me, when there were so many other wonderful things I didn't see.  Sign.....

Sunsets....

These photos were taken a few days ago on an evening ferry home. Above is Hoy High lighthouse. Below the sun is setting on the entrance to Scapa Flow

And here we have the hills of Hoy wearing a hat for the occasion!

St Magnus Festival II

The recital by brass quintet "Pure Brass" exceeded expectations!  The quintet are a young group of professional musicians who gave a brilliant and, at times, witty, recital.  My personal favourites were the Fnugg, wonderfully executed, and I had NO idea a tuba could make those kinds of noises! Another fun piece was "the Reform of Rank Bajin" which included members of the audience being serenaded (um.... not sure if that's *quite* the right word for having a trumpet thrust in my right ear?!). Other more serious pieces were great too.

And the folk on Hoy made everyone welcome as usual, with lifts from the pier to the Hoy Kirk, via the cafe for tea and cake.  On the boat journey home we could hear the seals calling, a perfect end to a perfect evening.

And on the ferry over to Hoy we saw Dave MacLeod who had, the day previously, completed the ascent of St John's Head cliffs. Breaking new ground as that particular route hadn't been climbed before (and that is the limit of my climbing knowledge!).  He is either a very brave man, or completely bonkers! Either way, well done to him. Dave's description of the climb can be found on his blog here

One of my blog readers commented that I portrayed the Orkney landscape as soft rolling hills.  Well generally it is, though there are some high points around the coasts, and the island of Hoy has a hill just a wee bit shorter than a mountain! I must post some pictures sometime..... Graemsay though is definitely low lying with the highest point being just 65 feet!

Here are some of the Hoy Hills from Graemsay, but the cliffs that were climbed are out of sight....