RIP Gertie

We've 2 groups of geese. One of the the  three living in the Burn Field  has been sitting on some eggs.  The other pair hang round the drive and pond ( and house) . And the female (Gertie) has been laying eggs - but we think the ravens or hoodies have been taking them - we have found broken goose eggs in the fields.

For the last few days she has been sitting - on nothing-  in various places.
And today we found her on the  empty nest she had made previously.
Very strange - usually whne you approach  a goose they hiss at you , but she didnt. She was very limp and not reacting .

So something clearly was amiss.

And this afternoon on checking on her , we found that she had died. if the information we were given when we received her was accurate , she would be 7 years of age. And dometic geese and live up to the age of 30  so it was unlikely to be 'old age' .

RIP Gertie

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the eggless turkey nest

So there have been a couple of ravens around , and the hoodies ( hooded crows) , and the turkey nest is empty .
1 +1 = ?
 Adn weve found some empty, broken eggs

and te nest is empty of eggs

so ive added some netting to see if that dissuades the maruaders.

And then there were 6

One of the ducks went AWOL and then later reappeared with 7 ducklings.
And they have been growing , shepherded about  by their mother, who keeps a watchful eye on them.

But over the last few days we have only seen 6 ducklings, however much we count

We assumed it had either wandered off and got lost , perhaps like this one , or it had been got by an otter because they do have a track record , or perhaps the hooded crows had taken it (but we thought they are getting a bit big for that ) . 

But we found some evidence in the field , a short distance from the Burn.

Its a duckling-sized leg. We had a look and couldn't  find any more bits of duckling. And this has been picked clean. So whatever took the duckling in the first place  left the carcass and this  scavengers - probably hooded crows - have cleaned up afterwards and dropped it in the field. 

If we loose another one in a similar way , we'll have to do something about penning them in until they are a bit bigger. 

The egg stealer

we have been suspecting that  something has been taking eggs. We thought it might be rats  - so we set some rat traps. But still the eggs were disappearing.





We spotted  some new suspects hanging around.





And now  we have got evidence .