Sexing Camilla

My profession (aka. Paid job) is as a wildlife ecologist,so I can finally offer you some professional advice John! Since Canada geese are not sexually dimorphic (they have the same plumage), in order to tell the sex of the bird you have to get up close and personal with them. This entails grabbing the goose, putting it on its back between your legs on the ground with the head tucked under your body and pressing hard with your thumbs on either side of the vent/cloacal opening. If it is a gander, a corkscrew shaped appendage will pop out. If not, you have a female. On goose banding days we do hundreds of them at a go. We also do bag checks of duck hunters and it is much easier sexing a dead goose than a live one!

So said the delightful Sherry from Spinners End Farm and this morning I took her advice, grabbed Camilla/ Charles ( delete when appropriate) when I let the animals out of their houses and in one swift movement popped the goose on his back and straddled him.

Everything was going swimmingly, even though Camilla was honking like an express train, and I was just about to flex the old thumbs around the aforementioned cloacal opening when all hell let loose.

I had just had time to turn my head to the right when I was hit in the face by a flurry of claws, beak and red feathers.

No doubt spurred on by Camilla's distress calls, Eric the diminutive cockerel had suddenly decided to go all super hero and batter the shit out of me, and luckily for him I was in an ideal position ( with my hands busy) not to be able to defend myself.

Eric got several more karate chops in before I made a run for it.

Camilla remains unsexed

And I got my arse well and truly kicked by a six inch high cockerel

Eric wounds...I need a hot sweet tea

Eric is the one on the left with the killer expression

Camilla Or Could It Be Charles?

Camilla ( or Charles) leaving her/his bachelor pad this morning

Things return to normal today. Chris has already left for the University early this morning and Sorrel leaves on the 10 am train. Trelawnyd, for me will change from a full,constantly " moving" cottage interior , returning to the steady routine of vegetable bed preparation and rooster arse Vaseline dabbing.

April heralds the start of goose eggs season.

Winnie and Jo always choose to drop their large oval eggs inside the goose house and as soon as they arrive, Camilla, the Canada Goose gets ousted from the flock.

It happened last year and no doubt it will happen next year, as suddenly the three domestic geese decide that Camilla cannot be tolerated for the duration of the short egg laying season.

I suspect Camilla is in fact a gander.

Perhaps any professional  " goose person" out there could confirm my  suspicions.I would be grateful

In the meantime, Camilla is shacked up with Bogbrush and his cohorts, and will spend a lonely and slightly sad existence on the periphery of the goose flock until hormones return to normality in a couple of months.

Right, I can hear my MIL stirring so I am off to cook her breakfast.....

I may treat myself to a scotch egg after I drop her off at the station......Marks And Spencer do a cracking quality two pack!

...get me........Marks & Spencer Scotch eggs on a Monday!

How decadent 

Hey ho

Oh She Loves Her Crumpet Does Sorrel!

It's Sorrel's last night here in Wales

So it's a time for warming her crumpets by the fire

Ohh errr missus

A Toy Boy Down The Lane

The ducks have been playing up 

Led by the three drakes, Halleh, and the new boys Bert & Ernie, all eight have been disappearing through the snow damaged fencing to wander across the horse livery pastures and down into the lane.

A rather bedraggled middle aged woman knocked on the cottage window at lunchtime, just as I was settling down with a coffee and Just A Minute, and told me that they were out on the road.

She informed me that " her David" was stood guarding them and asked if I could sort them out.

We wandered down the lane and after thanking David who was a dishy looking twenty something and still holding my mug of coffee in my hand, I yelled at the ducks to get their arses back in the field.

Ducks may be thick as mince,

But when they are bollocked, they tend to return to places they know and love.

So as the ducks panicked, ran in a few circles before galloping  home, I turned to the woman and said

"Thank you.... It was lucky that you and your son was about"

The scruffy looking  woman pursed her lips slightly

" He's not my son, he's my husband"

She said with a slight hardness in her voice.

And neither of them reacted at all

When I said with an embarrassed and slightly camp 

"Oohhh............lucky you!"

Bert and Ernie ( their feathers already back to a cracking condition) are 4th and 2nd from the right

A Brief Regret

I am very lucky as I get on remarkably well with my MIL.
We both work at it, good relationships have to be worked at.
But with her it is an easy path of friendship which I hope I have reciprocated over the fourteen years or so I have known her.
Chris never really had a chance to meet and know my mother.It is a fact that I regret somewhat for they would have made a sparkling pair of jousting partners.
My mother enjoyed a good debate , especially after a  bucket of gin and tonic. Chris enjoys a debate any time of day and with his razor sharp academic mind coupled with her waspish tongue, I suspect that if she had lived into her eighties, they would have made for  the oddest couple of friends.
She would have amused him, for she would have reflected the sharp and typically Northern humour Chris seems to enjoy in me and he would have provided her with a challenge.
Someone who would not have let her rule the roost , so to speak.
Mind you, I could be totally wrong about this.
They could have detested each other with a passion.
But I like to think that they would have been, if not bosom friends, well an interesting couple of jousting partners, par excellence

TWD

Last Episode in 15 mins......boo hoo

Light & Noise

In the winter this woolly hat is never off my head.

Not only is it a panacea to all of the negative elements the winter has to throw at me. it doubles as a handy chicken wrap ( Eric fits snugly inside it when I have to spray his sore arse on a daily basis) and it can hold a dozen eggs quite easily if I have forgotten the collecting bowl.

I will wear the bloody thing 24/7 if Chris allows it and I have even been known to wear it in bed ( pulled down over my eyes), as the arrival of British Summer time has meant that dawn bursts forth around 6 am......early morning light wakes me up as easily as a fat man banging a drum would do.

The cockerels ( all seven of them) start crowing before dawn.  It used to worry me, as we have three sets of neighbours that flank the field, but after taking a straw poll of opinions it is clear that non of the residents of the lane are really bothered by the noise. 

In actual fact most say  that when they hear a particularly loud cock-a - doodle - do, they are actually reassured by it for it means that the roosters are still firing on all cylinders......it's the same phenomenon of someone who lives next to a railway or under a flight path...........you get so used to the noise so much that you fail to hear it anymore.

This morning, as I lay half asleep in bed with my hat over my eyes... I tried to guess what time it was.

The cockerels were crowing intermittently , and the geese were honking their occasional reply but the dogs were still fast asleep in their untidy puddles on the bed and Albert was snoring from his place on the window seat ,so I thought it was still around 6am, and settled down under my hat to go back to sleep.

I think I will stop wearing the hat in bed.........in actual fact, it was well past 8am and the field animals AND my MIL were up and waiting patiently for their breakfasts

     

What's Spanish For Downton Abbey?

sorrel loves her Downton Abbey and so historic houses of any sort provide her with a bit of daydreaming pleasure just like the odd walking zombie fires up my walking Dead juices.
Today's  trip out today children was to our very own nearby Bodelwyddan Castle ( go on you non Welsh readers try pronouncing THAT one)
The castle in its present form dates from the 1840s and today houses many of the nations portrait paintings in partnership with the National Portrait Gallery.
One of my regular readers should enjoy this posts photos as she was a pupil at the castle when it was a girls' school until 1982.So Nia........enjoy the view....I remember very well, picking you up in my old Austin 1300 in the early 80s

The second bump on the far hills, is Trelawnyd's Gop Hill

We had a mooch around the restored Victorian formal rooms and only ran off and left Sorrel when she buttonholed a bemused Spanish museum tour guide to ask where the castle's kitchens were. ( she loves the "downstairs" life of these old houses!)
He had absolutely had no idea what she was on about and tried to explain in terrible English where the cafe was located.
The more she asked where the kitchens and servants' quarters could be found ,the more confused he became, and by the time she started to mention Mrs Patmore from Downton Abbey , he had given up the ghost and had walked away .......... 

After an hour or so enjoying the. House, we had a stroll in the grounds( where I took this "mother and son" portrait before we set off home for tea and buns

Chris NEVER outwardly smiles

Inside he does

Honest