As much as the birds make up a significant part of the farm's income, I have to admit that there are regular moments where I really don't understand them.
This duck, for example, has an entire pond not five feet from where she is bathing in a 25 gallon water trough. All the other ducks spend hours happily paddling around and cleaning themselves in the pond, but at least once a week I'll dump the trough, refill it, walk on to the next trough and turn around to find her cleaning herself in the pig's water.
The chickens, despite having dozens of nest boxes in multiple places around the property, persist in laying eggs in the most perilous places. I found a stash perched on top of a roll of fencing today, and another just *outside* the fence yesterday. And then of course there was the bird that hatched out chicks on top of the wire stretched over the run. The little cheepers had an abrupt vertical challenge early in life. Amazingly, most made it, but then mama bird turned out to have no clue what to do with chicks once they were out of the egg. :(
Back when we had quail, they were amazing escape artists. I tried three times to design a tractor that would let them have some freedom, then tried to select for quail that wouldn't escape, then gave up and let the last few be free for their short little lives. The things would burrow under the sides of a tractor, slip out the smallest hole, hang themselves in the wire... When they were chicks I was pouring a cup of food on the ground for them, got called away and set the cup on its side in the enclosure. I came back 10 minutes later to find several of them had stuffed themselves into the cup and suffocated, despite having ample food in open air inches away.
Someday I'll try quail again, probably in cages. At least at first - perhaps I ought to master drawing between the lines before I venture out of them. Everyone thinks of the person who knows nothing about a field and subsequently suggests the genius idea that no expert has thought of because they're too set in convention. I've had moments like that, spots on the farm where I came up with something brilliant despite having no idea what I was doing. But I've also had plenty of moments where what I didn't know killed a plant or an animal. It's part of life, part of my learning process, but also part of my failures. As I move forward and make changes, I carry those deaths with me. I may have caused them, but I can make sure they change me.
To my knowledge, I haven't made the same mistake twice. Each day is full of fresh new mistakes to make and learn from!
