Apart from the pigs, who have filled our chest freezer with their wonderful fat covered meat, there are just three animals on the field that have actually earned their keep over the past few years.
They are the guinea fowl.
Hughie, little Ivy and Alf watch the field every night.
They are constantly on sentry duty and miss nothing when it comes to spotting a potential threat, and once seen, they will scream their warning calls "out and loud" until that particular danger has well and truly passed.
This morning I was trying to enjoy my lie in. Now when I say "lie in" what I actually mean is that blissful and snatched 40 winks I endeavour to take between Chris getting up ( 5.45am) and my actual "getting up" time of 7.00 am...anyway as I was tucked away under the duvet enjoying a particularly smutty dream featuring Russell Crowe , the guineas started their warning calls..
At full tilt, the chatter has all of the intensity of a military machine gun, and the very extreme nature of it immediately informed me that a very real threat was afoot. So, with a sigh, I dragged myself out of bed and poked my sleepy head out of the window.
A scruffy fox was tip toeing over the field. with his nose down. He was circling the goose house carefully and from the cottage I could just make out a low warning hiss from the geese who were watching the scene carefully from their coop window.
Not having a gun to hand I had to resort to a fairly effective and well tried call of "BUGGER OFF!"
and by the time I had hurried down to the field, the guineas were all smug and silent on their perch in the Churchyard and the fox had long gone.
Ivy, Hughie and Alf trying to keep warm last Winter |