ménage à trois

It has been noisy on the field for the last 24 hours.
Last night Alf and Hughie could be seen galloping anxiously to and fro by the hawthorn hedge, with their necks held high, They were looking for little Ivy, who was no where to be seen and were calling their "machine gun calls" time and time again in an effort to locate their lost "flock" member.
Far in the distance I thought I could hear a distinctive guinea fowl reply, but by dusk, the hen had not returned and the males had reluctantly made their way to their roosting tree where they sat chatting quietly to themselves like unhappy old men on a park bench.

Alf and Hughie (foreground) Ivy is behind

Guinea fowl do not mate for life, but they do forge incredibly strong bonds with each other.so it is with a very heavy heart that I watched Hughie and Alf's moving efforts to find Ivy.
Little scraps of birds they may be, but the anxiety and emotion they exhibit when separated is very real indeed...there is no need for anthropomorphism here...
I suspect Ivy has made herself a nest and has "gone to ground" so to speak. It was not long ago since Rachel over at the nearby riding stables found a guinea nest with 15 eggs inside it. and not wanting Ivy to sit, I told Rachel to destroy it....perhaps nature has taken over once again.


Ebb and Flow....Ebb and Flow...... this is the way of free range animals..........today Felicity Shagwell and the mini-me's have just been let out of their run to join in with the field population and next week Carol and Polenta may be hardy enough to start their adventures in the long grass with the remaining runner ducks
The circle continues.


Postscript ( written 5 hours later)
I have just spent a fruitless 2 hours helping elderly villager, Mr Ellis to sort out his Broadband connection (and made a friend out of a delightful BT call centre employee from the Indian subcontinent as I did so) and so I was fairly late taking the dogs out for a walk.... we went down Gypsy Lane which was the direction in which I thought I heard Ivy last night, and on the way back, I noticed the little guinea fowl slowly  making her way  homeward across the far fields.
Apologies for this now rather pointless post......as all the guineas are happily filling their fat faces with an extra portion of corn...........