Chickulation Explosion

Cheepie, our errant bantam, has hatched ten, yes, ten chicks.

She's a proud mum. But the evidence from the chicks varied colours is that she has been getting about a bit with the blokes...

Who is/are your parents?

Eight hatched!

Here they are, the Croft's Great Eight.

All eight of our bird box eggs have hatched, and both parents are now in full feeding mode.

UPDATE: 23 May 2014: All eight have flown the nest - a really successful clutch!

Here's one on his way to the bird box with a load of lunch.

Lunch, delivered

[Photo of Parus major, Great Tit, courtesy of the lovely Henri Zomer, a student at the University of Groningen who stayed with us recently]

Dropping in on Eve

Here she is, our new housemate:

Parus major, a Great Tit, making her new home on eight eggs.

We're eavesdropping - step back Edward Snowden - as she incubates her eggs. If they hatch and we can film it, I'll post that too.

Baking day

I got up early to start the bread oven...

I'm a heavy smoker

...and made all of this...

The busy baker

 


 ...as well as a pizza and a coca de vidre (flat very thin bread with sugar and aniseed, cooked very fast in the hottest oven possible).

The piped biscuits (they look like they've been plopped rather than piped - I'm not a qualified piper) are gluten free. The recipe, adapted from my Good Housekeeping Cookery Book, 1985 edition, is:

125g butter
50g icing sugar
65g rice flour
65g oatmeal flour
A quarter level teaspoon of baking powder
Nutmeg, grated
1 tablespoon of milk, to soften the dough.

Heat the bread oven. In my case this means starting 3-4 hours earlier, burning oak logs in the oven to get it up to temperature. Aim for 190ºC. Line a large baking tray with baking parchment (greaseproof paper.)

Beat butter until smooth and creamy, sift in sugar and beat lots until pale and airy.

Sift in flour and baking powder, add nutmeg and beat. Add a little milk to soften the mixture. Put into piping bag and, er, make a splodge onto the baking parchment. And then lots more splodges until you've used it up. Bake for 20 mins approx.

Furry new

She's just a few months old, she still does not have a name, and she's just come to live with us.

Here she is, with her mum Margarita, tucking into a load of fresh hay after walking down here from Can Peu Alt. Jordi and his sons brought the two donkeys over here this morning.

Hay, I've arrived

For Arran, our resident teenager, it was a bit of a shock. He said hello...

I nose it's a new donkey...but two?

 

Curious

All together now...sweeeeeeet!

Here is Curious, born 24 hours before to Fidget, one of our Ripollesa sheep.

Camera? What camera?

Dance like a hoverfly...

...look like a bee. Or a wasp.

This, I think, is Volucella zonaria, a wasp-mimicking hoverfly. H/she was drying her wings in a sunny spot above a miniature wetland we've created using an old water tank. He's big!

Big, bug and beautiful

And this is the (not so) Scarce Swallowtail, Iphiclides podalirius, laying eggs on 5th May 2014 in the mud outside the donkey stable. Not a great photo, but I wanted to record the date.

Half a dozen here, half a dozen there