Saturday, May 24, 2008

The Gander Experiment

These last two weeks have been extreme here in Cornwall; some beautiful long sunny days mixed with, well, last Friday for instance……a wet day but not too bad until about 3 o’clock when the rain became torrential. Two hours later we were two feet under water. I had to dig out the full waterproofs and wellingtons that I’d just stored away for the summer and get to work clearing and unclogging and generally keeping the water damage to a minimum. By 7pm the water had receded enough for me to decide it was safe to go home without much damage to property but lots of problems for the ground nesting birds and their youngsters. Several nests had been flooded, including our Snowy Owls who were nesting on the ground in a scrape. A number of ducklings also just seemed to disappear, presumably victims of the cold, wet weather. Hopefully the ducks and other birds will try again, our Snowy Owl hasn’t wasted any time at all and has already made a new (higher) scrape and laid two eggs; she doesn’t usually sit very well so it will be interesting to see how this affects her.

Our Chinese Fawn Gosling are three weeks old today and making good progress. I want to let them out of their hatching shed and pen area and into the grounds so that they can graze at will and have access to the ponds but the problem is that without a goose to look after them their chances of surviving are low. So we’ve hatched a plan (no pun intended) and it goes like this……

We have a Greylag Gander who loves babies. He loves them so much that he attaches himself to any duck or goose that has ducklings or goslings and tries to steal the babies. Don’t worry, he won’t harm them, in fact he usually does a great job of taking care of them. If we can link the gander up to our goslings they will stand a good chance of survival. This afternoon I managed to catch him and tonight he is in the shed with the goslings. Tomorrow morning we’ll try and decide whether they have bonded and if they have we’ll let them all out together, so fingers crossed for a good result. If they don’t bond them we haven’t lost anything and we’ll let the gander free.

Nigel (our Fallow buck) is less bashful now that his antlers are growing back; they are now about four inches long and covered in velvet. Soon they will start growing very fast and he will cheer up even more. His does are looking very rotund and we are expecting some fawns in the next couple of weeks or so- let’s hope it stays fairly dry.

To other matters…the otters are all fine, and the cubs in particular are still doing well.

Some of you may have seen Wednesday’s Western Morning News and Friday’s Times with our new national star Biggy having his tummy tickled (very cute).

Staying with the paper theme I’d like to thank Class 1 of Egloskerry Primary School for their excellent book and information sheets. Its really nice to see the children so interested in nature after their visit here a couple of weeks ago. All of their work is on display and they have even had time to give our young buck a name; he’s to be called Hansel because he’s handsome and lives in the woods. I don’t think any of us can argue with that!

Saturday, May 10, 2008

Biggy to the Rescue (well almost)!

Smalley is doing quite well now. We had to move all of the otter cubs from their new sunny pen back to the old one a few weeks ago as Smalley had a little accident and fell in one of the ponds in the pen and was unable to get himself out. Biggy tried to be a hero and tried pulling him out of the pond with his mouth, just the way their older siblings would have done had they still been in the pen with the family. However Biggy was not yet strong enough or big enough to achieve this feat and one of the keepers came to the rescue. He was a bit shivery but once he was dried off he was absolutely fine. We then moved them all back to the pen they had been in originally and even though Smalley was ok we still all kept a close eye on him. Now they are all doing well and Smalley’s trip into the pond hasn’t seemed to scare him off the water and although he’s been a bit slower than the others he’s just this week started to swim. Even though Biggy and Smalley can swim perfectly well and started at quite a young age in the bath at home, they seemed to be a bit put off by the coldness here, but now the sun is shining and it’s starting to warm up they’ve taken to it really well. The other cubs are all doing ok as well, Cinnamon and Biggy continue to be the best of friends and love playing together and generally trying to cause as much mayhem as possible. Leap is still a bit shy but as she is so much younger than the others this is understandable. She likes the company of the others and doesn’t like being left on her own. But we think she is getting a bit braver as she will come out of her box of her own accord first thing in the morning and in the evening when no members of the public are around. It looks like the toad incident may be one of many attempts at trying to catch their own food as they recently caught a newt and Biggy in particular is quite adept at fishing for insects and grubs in the water. However whilst little squirmy things interest them they have shown that there are not quite so brave when it comes to slightly bigger animals with feathers. One of the ducklings managed to get into their pen the other day, bear in mind it was small enough it would fit quite comfortably into the palm of your hand and they all ran away from it! This is obviously one of the learning processes they have missed out on from not being in with their family and it is up to us to teach them that these things are ok.

All of the otters are doing well and have taken to sleeping a lot more as the weather gets warmer. However they will occasionally exert a bit of pressure on themselves and in two days Tino and Tamarisk caught themselves three moorhens, needless to say they weren’t interested in their lunch at all after that.

We have had a few ducklings hatch, several Mallards and some Muscovy ducklings, however these have gradually dwindled in numbers, probably due to the crows coming down and picking them off and we have also noticed several Moorhen chicks running around. The Barnacle geese appear to be sitting on eggs on the island. Last year they had five goslings so hopefully we will have some more this year. They are very protective parents and look after their young very well. We have also had an Indian runner duckling hatch from the incubator and to keep him company we caught up one of the mallard ducklings and both seem to get on very well. Today we have four Chinese goose eggs in the process of hatching and one that has already hatched, also out of the incubator. So, all in all things seem to be successful on the young bird front.

The young buck has improved in confidence a great deal and from just starting to take food out of the keepers hands it took him a couple of days and he is now taking food out of the publics hands and is not at all shy about coming forwards for it. He has also just started getting his first white spots on his coat, so he’s starting to blend in with the others a bit more. All of the deer are quite relaxed at the moment and many of them have been coming down to feed from peoples hands. Nigel is looking a little less sorry for himself and has two bumps rather like plant bulbs on his head where his antlers will start to grow back.

The tawny owlet hasn’t been seen in a while now so we are assuming it is fully fledged and has now left the nest.

Several people have now seen the young joeys in their pouches and a few people have even seen them coming out of the pouch for a few minutes and then getting back in.

We have also seen some very young muntjac fawns, definitely one and possibly two. One of them is very small and has been seen wandering around with its mum and was also seen suckling a few weeks ago.

What with all the young birds, deer and wallabies it is quite an exciting time at the moment!


Composed by Sonia (one of the keepers).