Tag: animals

When Fickó met Gréti

Fickó arrived today, our new handsome donkey boy. We got him with the idea to become a long-term partner for our beautiful Gréti.

Gréti acted as any self-respecting lady would have done: she showed no interest in Fickó’s company. But we know that many a great love story has begun with rejection in the history of man- and donkeykind. 🙂

At the same time, it’s the first time that there’s somebody lower in the pecking order than Gréti. Always an interesting time, when a horse or donkey realizes that there’s somebody they can dominate. A time to show their real colours. Looking forward to seeing how this develops in the nexts days and weeks.

Fickó
Gréti playing the strict lady

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The hoopoe has arrived

Today I heard the Eurasian hoopoe for the first time this spring. It was about the same time last year. The hoopoe is one our favourite summer birds with its beautiful colours. His call belongs to the Hungarian summer, as does the cuckoo and the golden oriole. The latter typically arrive in the 2nd half of April.

We hung up a nesting house for the hoopoe. It’s larger and has a bigger hole than the ones for the tit-size birds. Our farm and it’s environment is ideal for them, so we’re hopeful we’ll have a nesting pair with more to follow in the coming years. Looking forward to them.

Hoopoe nesting house
This picture was taken in my old place. We hope for a similar view. 🙂

The sound of the lambs

Our very first lambs started arriving a few days ago. This is the first lambing of Zöld Zengő’s sheep flock. Unfortunately, it started in the coldest weather, with -10 degrees at night. The mums had the babies, dried them up and then walked away to feed, leaving the lambs lying in the snowfield. This came as a surprise to us, and we were lucky to have Niki and Balázs there to take care of the little ones. We decided to close the herd in the large shed where we keep the hay, so the next ones give birth in a protected place. At least we hope there’re going to be some more of these sweeties.

 

Winter

After the spring in January, we finally got some reminder what a proper winter could have looked like. We got a nice amount of snow that managed to last until the frost arrived. Now we can walk on beautiful fields of snow, frozen solid.

Although nature is said to close up in winter, it’s also a time of letting us in on her secrets: In winter we can see the bird nests in the leafless trees and all tresspassers get “busted” as they leave their footprints in the snow. There’s quite a lot of traffic on the farm, apparently. We found traces of deer, hares and foxes going up and down.