Even More Little Ones

Cheeky Chops, the lamb that I had to bottle feed has gone from strength to strength and is now only slightly smaller than her twin sister. She soon got the hang of bottle feeding and would start to bleat when she thought a bottle was due. She started on 4 feeds a day, then 3, then 2, and for the last 3 days just one. Today (4 June) she did not get a "breakfast" bottle, so I took her a small container of sheep mix. She did not think much of it to start with and kept pushing between my legs, looking for milk!
The bottle feeding went on for just over a month and was not as time consuming as I feared.
I was reluctant to start as one can end up with a sheep that thinks it's a human and does not bond with the flock, always wanting to be with its human mum instead. This is not the case with Cheeky Chops though, she loves her real mum and only came to me for the milk. She would always dash straight back to Beth as soon as she had had enough, never a backward glance at me. I think Beth must have realised she did not have enough milk for two and so just fed the one she thought was the strongest. She always allowed Cheeky Chops to snuggle up for warmth and answered the pathetic bleats when Cheeky got "lost" in long grass. In the end the lamb got the best of both worlds, food from me and love from her mum: a good outcome all round.

It has been a good year, so far, for young birds in the garden. My favourites, the Long
Tailed Tits, nested in the berberis bush opposite the kitchen windows and got at least 6
fledglings, possibly more. Several times I thought they were about to fly the nest because there were 3 birds sitting on the telephone wire, just above the bush. But then it seemed that 3 birds were feeding the young, something I had not seen before. As they perched on the wires it was hard to see their colours, they just appeared as silhouettes, but a look through binoculars confirmed that these were adults, with lovely pink feathers. The
youngsters have dark cheeks and no pink to start with. We have quite a few bird books and one did say that unpaired adults will help other couples that they have spent the winter in flocks with, so I think this must have been the case here. I only saw 6, but there could have been up to a dozen.
Right by our main gate we have a big Bramble apple tree with a hollow trunk. There are 2 holes in it one above the other. In the past Tits have started to make nests there but the moss put in at the top has always dropped or been pulled out of the bottom hole. This year ivy has grown around the trunk and blocked up the lower hole and Great Tits have
successfully nested there. As we opened or closed the gate we would peep in. Sometimes a slightly startled parent would be there, or a couple of heads would pop up, gapes wide open, hoping we were mum or dad with some food. I don't know how many chicks there were, but it looked crowded in there at the end and I think they left safely.
Yet another baby has arrived on the scene. After loosing our much loved old dog Bob we now have mischief on 4 legs in the form of Ted, a chocolate Labrador puppy. No peace for the wicked now!

Wendy Bathurst