Farm Safari

The farm is full of calves at various stages of cuteness. My favourites are the Jersey and Jersey-Holsteins in hot chocolate- and cappacino- colours with white bands around their square noses, a toupee like mop of hair between round furry ears and extraordinarily limpid eyes.

Aside from many calves in all shapes and colours, I encountered a plethora of wildlife on today's walk. First I startled a piglet the colour of 70% chocolate and as soft and wriggly as a labrador pup, but hiding in the grass and snorting at me before running away. I also surprised a ferel sheep, hugely shaggy, but with a finely shaped white face poking out from its dirty dreads.

Picking my way down a steep scrubby slope I stopped, entranced by a four fantails dancing around a tree. Then I realised that there were three or four of them in every direction I looked, I was in the middle of a flock of 20 or 30 all snacking on the late afternoon haze of flying insects. Fantails, always a delight, are nonetheless commonplace round here, usually just one or two at a time. I didn't even know they flocked in such numbers. And then screeching through the middle of this kaleidescope of fantails came a couple of rozellas, the brightest coloured birds in Aotearoa.

As soon as I got home, continuing until now, as it falls dark, someone is shooting, presumably ducks since May is the season for it.