New Zealand - where the chickens eat ducklings!

I'm now in New Zealand and it's so different from my usual existence it feels as if I've arrived on a different planet - I'm surrounded by farmland on all sides and there are cows outside my bedroom window.

Outside the front door there are chickens (the cockerel attacks your ankles!)

and ducks

and they will come into the house if you don't shut the door firmly behind you.

We have two orphan ducklings in the bath

because mother Jemima decided that she'd had enough of motherhood and escaped from the pen this morning to waddle off with her tribe.  Ducks are, apparently, very bad mothers.  But Jemima's sister is sitting on a batch of eggs in the woodpile with great determination and hopefully they will have a better fate.  Most of Jemima's ducklings were eaten by the chickens as they hatched from the eggs. Nature is very cruel!

Peko on her eggs in the woodpile

I am thoroughly over the jet-lag, thanks to my lovely daughter who organised a girlie weekend at Hanmer thermal springs - two days lying in hot water breathing sulphur would cure anything!