The chickens are at the half fluff-half feathers stage of development. Vesna is doing a good job of caring for her chicks as Holly found out when she tried to chase one of the chickens. Vesna came after her all flapping and squawking so Holly now tends to leave the chickens alone.

The baby magpies are almost able to feed themselves now but their mother is still teaching them all of the tricks of living at Clybucca - sitting on the verandah railing to beg for food, stealing cat biscuits, swooping on the chooks and now stealing food from the cockatiel cage.

Shelley is now too big to sleep with Peter in the kennel so she sleeps in the Chook Hilton with Ike the drake. Weaning her was a noisy business.

Shelley helped Holly make a "cat door" in the flyscreen on the computer room window. Now that the flyscreens are repaired, no more cat door. Holly turned two on Christmas Day so hopefully she will not make more holes.

Three generations of ducks - grandmother, mother, daughter - right wonky wing, left wonky wing, two wonky wings - must be genetic.

On Christmas Day, large areas of NSW were ablaze due to bushfires - fanned by hot westerly winds and 40 degree temperatures. In the morning we went to the beach at Hat Head and could see lots of smoke from the fire on the headland at South West Rocks. Come night, the flames were visible from our verandah. Then followed days of bushfire haze and blood red sunsets.

Irena & Jason are growing well. Between the back fence and the drain which runs behind our property, there is an area of no-man's-land. They have discovered that they can get under the fence. Good supplementary food seeing the grass in our paddocks is burning off beacuse we desperately need rain. I put the big cows out to graze in the lane every couple of days