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!