There's an ugly duckling on my roof

Putting the birds away at dusk I heard this bizarre squawking. It didn't sound like a Barn owl screech to me, but whatever it was caused great disturbance to my duck flocks; they huddled in the corner of their runs, hunkered down as if there was a fox about. I couldn't see or smell anything untoward, but as usual wildlife knows best.
As I came down the farm track towards the house I noticed through the gloom a large bird sitting on the ridge of the roof midway between the chimney pots. It was clearly a duck, but not what I'd call a thing of beauty. The Muscovy or Barbary duck is the turkey of the waterfowl world - basically it has an excess of skin around its face. I cannot love this breed.
I doubt it will go anywhere in the dark, but will probably fly back home once it's light; some folk down the road have Muscovies that perambulate the lanes oblivious to the (admittedly rare) traffic.
You never know what will turn up next. I'm still waiting to come across a zebra, although considering the state of the land, a water buffalo or croc might be more the thing.

Photo by Stuart Brown

Electronic tagging for sheep

I'm having an ill-informed panic. I have no idea yet what the consequences will be. I don't know how the farm will be affected. But all around me there are rumours and facts posing as rumours washing around regarding the need for sheep to be electronically tagged by the end of 2009. According to Europa, "Electronic identifiers cost around 1-2€ per animal, hand-held readers are available from around 200€ and static readers from around 1000€. Farmers and operators will be responsible for the costs of meeting the requirement to electronically identify every sheep and goat. However, these costs should be offset by better disease control measures resulting from more effective identification".
For me that's simply an unaffordable prospect with a flock of 25- 30 ewes. I'd hope that there can be some kind of co-operative sharing among small farmers, but that's not easy to sort, even when surrounding farmers are eager to support each other. This was brought home by the attempts at minimising the waste of necessary but expensive Bluetongue vaccine; the stuff has to be used within 8 hours, and if you didn't need a whole bottle, or needed one or two doses more than a bottle, a mad ring-round ensued, with the vets dispensing the stuff unable to help with this logistical nightmare.
I need to find out more and come back to this when I feel better informed. Meantime, I'm having a gloom moment about the future of small farmers.

Fabulous sea creature habitat

Back to the wonderful Northcott Mouth today to get a winter fillip and celebrate the neighbour's dog's birthday (any excuse). It is the most amazing place.
But what is this stuff? It looked like sesame seed snaps, extruded into cylinders and clumped together in massive boulder size lumps. Click on the image to have a really close look at the structure.


Postscript: it's honeycomb worm! Even the name is fabulous.

Love thy neighbour

There is a knock on the door. I think it will be the postman with some recorded deliveries I have to sign for. But no. There is a small smiling man holding out a huge bouquet of seasonal flowers, and they are smiling at me too. I fill my arms with this unexpected treat. "There's a card" says the small smiling man. The card has no signature, but it's clearly from the neighbours whose farm-sitting we are carrying out whilst they holiday en famille in Hawaii. "Thank you so much for making our Christmas possible...forever in your debt".
I am very moved. The small smiling man goes on his way to make more people very happy.