Night call.

So...tonight we heard a sugar glider calling. They used to visit the tree that is by Blue Moon when we were building the house years ago and we haven't heard or seen any since until tonight. It's so lovely to know that they are still about.

Up to no good!

So...last night was wild with very strong winds. Power lines around town were cut by fallen trees and much of the area around us had a night without power. Even the highway was blocked for a while by a fallen tree. Amidst all this chaos the fox decided to raid the roosters that we had moved up to Fort Yudhisthira. We heard a distress call around 9.00 pm and rushed up and saw the fox, well, it's glowing eyes in the torch light, escaping into the night. Of the six roosters up there we now only have four left. One rooster was missing and we found another lying outside the pen. Xolotyl survived.

Today I have built up the defences to keep the pesky fox out and set the fox trap.

There has been no sign of the fox for months and I was beginning to think they had moved on with our chooks all confined but no, they are back and up to no good.

Not such a bird brain!

So...it all became too much, being woken at dawn by 10 roosters competing in a daily crowing contest. Three are silkie roosters from our hatchlings last year and five are down in the old pen also from another 'hatch' of Arucana chicks from last year. The other two are Manitou, our oldest rooster and Xolotyl, who is the rooster in with our group of Arucanas.

The silkies roam the garden around Blue Moon and the others are nearby in the old pen, having been moved down there last year because of the fox attacks. Since they have been down nearer to us, Fort Yudhisthira has been damaged in a storm but the large pen at the back of Fort Yudhisthira is still intact.

We have decided that we are going to get rid of all of the roosters except Manitou. The three silkies were the first to go last Friday. We roasted one for dinner and the other two are in the freezer.

We moved Xolotyl and the other five roosters up to the back pen at Fort Yudhisthira to await their fate on Thursday night. Now the distance between them and us means their crowing no longer disturbs us.

That was the plan, but Xolotyl is not following it. Friday morning he was back down in the old pen. He had escaped the pen at Fort Yudhisthira after some netting by one of the gates had fallen down and returned to his hens. He was unceremoniously banished once more back to Fort Yudhisthira and I fastened up the netting so that it was more secure. But later that afternoon he was back again. He had found another hole in the netting that I had missed and had flown up out of it. Once more I returned him back with the other roosters and stuffed the hole he had escaped through with more netting.

Saturday afternoon I was astonished to find him out again. He had somehow managed to dislodge the netting I had blocked the hole with and was on his way back to his hens. He is one determined rooster and not such a bird brain.

I chased him back to Fort Yudhisthira and I have made sure there is no way he can escape again...or can he?

Still here.

Drone sunset.