Guinea Fowl Fever

"I woke early one morning on a weekend visit home and drew back the curtains to discover my mother’s latest embellishment to the grounds.

I was most surprised to see some incredibly ugly birds running all over the lawn, and not only did they look ghastly, but they were making the most infernal din, as they chased each other across the lawns.

The following morning when I rose and walked to the window to look at the day, there were these birds again, mad, bad and beautiful, behaving as only guinea fowl do scattering, twittering, quarrelling, and generally getting along. They, I thought, as I watched them with fascination, and not a little admiration, invading their new territory, are a real lesson to us all in their bickering, snickering, sulking and love. They moved as a flock, like a cloud, across the lawn and the sound of their feathers was like the sound of angels passing as if each wing was being lifted by the breeze of movement in some celestial purr.

You will have realised by now that it did not take long to succumb to Guinea Fowl Fever; far from continuing to consider them so ugly, I began to list all the little physical foibles which made them so beautiful; from scattering like a breeze, the delicate white and grey patterning on their feathers and the jaunty dash of red highlighting their jowls and head. Their eager, eager little mutterings of excitement, especially when they were engaged in their latest nefarious adventure whether it was to raid the precious and coveted daffodils of the village (many heated telephone calls ensued), annoying the holiday makers at the caravan site next door by tapping on their doors with their beaks and then running away, or merely refusing to be rounded up for bed by us  as they were very much targeted by our resident foxes.

Eventually I persuaded the fowl to join the other fowl in the coach house for the night time so they were safe. They did not like being told to go to bed, so the evening ritual of laying the birds to rest became a nightmare. “Go away”, they spluttered, tripping over each other in their eagerness to demonstrate that they did not wish under any circumstances to be confined with the other fowl. “Go away, away…” and they squawked “Go back, go back”, the eternal cry of the guinea fowl. “Go back”.

I became extremely fond of these daffy charming birds and whilst still pretty untamed, they would flock up to see me if I sat quietly under the three hundred year old green oak where they would perch randomly up branches or on the ground, but always as the gang, hating to be alone. They embodied the true meaning of the words “birds of a feather flock together.”"