Warning: there are more Starlings in this blog, than alpacas.
Calm settled in today. Two weeks ago, the waters had receded a whole field away, but this week they have risen to be lapping at our boundary again. Friday evening the wind was roaring for four hours, and thankfully all the shelters stayed un-damaged and in place. I had kept enhancing the anchorages, including adding bags of manure to hold them down!
We brought weaning to an end after just over three weeks, when we had to bring the herd together for shelter and a dry bed - after a couple of attempts to suckle, the weanlings were told to forget it by their mums, and we've not seen any attempts since. Halter training has been suspended temporarily for fear of recreating the famous Blue Peter incident with a baby elephant on a lead!
The herd were back over the hill today, and they were joined by a 'murmuration' of starlings - usually these occur on the permanent wetlands about 8 miles away, on a nature reserve called Shapwick Heath, but clearly they recognized our nearby new wetlands and saturated ground. As they take off, the instantaneous beating of wings makes a loud thud which Scrumpy found quite irritating!
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| uh oh - look out... |
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| here they come... |
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| "what the?" |
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| Scrumpy is cornered... |
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| ...but makes a break for it! |
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| "what's that noise?" |
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| "is it his camera?" |
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| Add caption |
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| that's enough Starlings - here are some Swans. |
And hopefully, we'll have clean and more photogenic alpacas soon.
