Four weeks ago (5th March) the baby goat in the background was born and has been wandering around the bottom hairpin with its mum.
The good news is that it's now got a playmate - not sure where this one came from. Neither of the mums were supervising, at least not in my sight.
A couple of times in recent weeks I have seen a second female on the other side of the fence, on the inside of the nature reserve. Maybe that was the other mother and this young one has now made its way through that fence.
The peace
and quiet of recent early mornings has been broken by the horn of a works train
going up the line. Today we were woken by the plaintive bleats of three goats.
I took Molly
out for her morning toilet and they were up by the railway; the female and the
kid eating tree leaves, the male eating thistle tops and foxgloves. This is a
new and very young family unit, the parents probably in their third year, with
striking black and white markings. The male has a completely black face apart
from a blob of white on his nose. The female and the kid with stripes as if
wearing masks to a masked ball. Have they come down from above the line?
As we
watched from by the veg patch the works train arrived causing a mini stampede
as they ran down the bank to escape down the drive; but Molly and me were in
the way. This is what they looked like:
Above the
railway one of the female goats had a kid at the beginning of March. Most of
the time she stays on a steep bank surrounded by a dense expanse of gorse making it difficult for foxes to creep up on her kid.
Meanwhile
below the railway there is lots of expectancy (on my part at least) but still
no kids. Yesterday I was alarmed to see an expectant nanny clambering over a
barbed wire fence. Or have I got it wrong and she’s not pregnant?
