Farm yard drama

We had an interesting farm yard drama play out recently. For background, I have to tell you that we lost our drake a few weeks ago. The guineas were putting up such a ruckus, I finally had to check on things (and with guineas, that's quite a lot of ruckus considering their usual noise-making machine). I found the six guineas looking on a beautiful red tail hawk that was standing in my driveway next to a very dead drake. I ran the hawk off and saw that he or she had a friend in the trees. On my way to an appointment, the only thing I could think to do was put him in a plastic bag and in the trash, poor guy. But I didn't want the hawks to see this as an easy picking ground for supper. It's not like they won't come back. They live here. The only thing I can hope is that the birds learn how to take cover when the hawks are around. I'm not yet convinced the birds are always that smart.

That leaves us with four female ducks with no male to herd them around and look out for them. Enter guineas. From there youngest days the guineas and ducks have hung out together from time to time, now they seem to always be together or close by. This morning in the pouring rain, the ducks were happily digging in the dirt with their beaks while the guineas stood nearby, complaining and huddled up but still staying close to the ducks.

A couple of days ago, Joan and I were sitting on the deck, relaxing and enjoying our view, when we saw the rooster, Hans, sidle up to one of the ducks and do his little dance around her. We are very proud to have a mostly gentlemanly rooster who attempts to seduce his ladies before mounting them, at least part of the time. He made a complete circumference and stood face to face with the duck. She even bobbed her head a little, the response they made to the drake when they were ready for him to mount them. We were wondering how this was going to play out when along came all six guineas. They calmly and quietly completely surrounded Hans, two of them standing solidly between the rooster and the duck. Hans stood stone still. They weren't making their alarm noise, just standing there quietly making a point. Their heads were moving around some, and some of them made the quiet whistling happy noise we love to hear. One guinea pecked Hans on the side of his head, lightly with no force or violence as if it were picking a piece of food off of him, and he stayed still. Shortly the duck just turned and wandered away. Then Hans crowed from the middle of the guinea circle, and the guineas began to disperse. Hans walked away as if nothing had happened, and all was quiet in the farm yard.

We watched this with amazement, asking each other surprised questions like, "did she just bob her head?" and pointing out astonishing details to each other like "that guinea just pecked Hans on the face." And at the end of the little drama saying "that was very West Side Story".  Since then we have taken to referring to the guineas as the ducks' bodyguards. Or maybe we should call them . . . would they be Jets or Sharks?

This was the only photo I managed to get.