I purchased a lavender female in the summer and was given a brown male. they free range. She laid eggs in August and hatched 11 keets. I kept them confined for three weeks and let them loose. its December and I'm have five plus the parents (lost some to resident hawks and a bald eagle). at least one offspring is female. is there concern If the offspring breed amongst themselves next year? also, to share my experience, I have not had a problem with noise like some others. they call for each other and if threatened. once my pit terrier mix was causing a ruckus with them and when I got there the dog was running for his life with mom and dad guinea chasing him at full speed and voice, but most of the time they are usually not noisy. they live mostly in 330' by 60' garden surrounded by electric fence. they have part of shed and roost in it at night. they wander out of garden to rest of yard (3.5 acres) and surrounding farmland (nearest house 1,000 Ft). they like to look at their reflection in my basement windows. In warmer weather they would roost in tree near house. my chickens are in tractor in garden and guinea dad does seem to torment them by running up to wire mesh and scaring them. I have had chickens get loose and never saw any problem with guineas. they are not far from the road but I never saw them in the street. I feed a corn type crumbles for game birds at night or whenever I get into the garden. they follow me when they think they are getting fed. they drink from drippers (although chickens wont). I showed one guinea how to drink and they all seemed to figure it out.

Caitlyn ... Can you get extra credit in biology class for writing a report on the hawk behavior? Have a friend hang back and take pictures for the report. Video it for YouTube! Seriously, for a couple of weeks more you may need to wear a bike helmet because they are very protective until the chicks a. Or walk under an open umbrella.

Update on the two fledlings. They are doing well and pretty grown up. Parents are gone. They are still around my yard and get pretty excited when I mow the lawn. They usually find something that I disturb in the grass for them to eat. I decided to have some fun yesterday (too much time on my hands I guess) with them to get a closer look. I put a red hot dog on the lawn attached with fishing line far out in the back. No hooks by the way. I kept twitching it across the grass while they were perched above. You guessed it, one of them from high above dove down onto it where I could see it up close. He only ate a little of the dog though then took off. I did it again and the other one dove at it again. This hawk kept picking at the fishing line but didn't stay too long. I didn't have the camera handy, but what a sight to see it fold up its wings from high above to attack it. Oh, by the way, when I was about 12 yrs old,61 now, I used to have five of these Broad winged hawks as pets. I wish I could find the pic that was taken of me with one sitting on my shoulder. Thats it for now.

Yeah, hes got some cool looking stuff on his cactus website, but it seems every time I look he's sold out! One day things might line up for me haha. Heres another good picture (these are all from the Library of Congress website) This is the South Gate (which is not a public gate). If you take Havana all the way north to 56th, it dead ends right into where this gate house once stood. Here it is today: These pictures aren't nearly as eerie as some of ones some people at work have from when they first arrived there in the 90's and started the clean up. If you've ever seen pictures of Chernobyl, you would be hard pressed to distinguish one from the other. On Monday, May 9th 2016 the President signed the legislation making the bison our national mammal (correction from above, the bald eagle is and has been, our national animal). I think the National Bison Herd in Dixon, Montana ( which was started in 1908 and is manged by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service) is the parent stock for many/most (all?) of the bison on public lands and by Indian Tribes (both the F&WS and Bureau of Indian Affairs are headed by the Department of the Interior). The one at Chief Hosa I believe is privately owned but I am pretty sure that's where the ones at Custer SP are from and the small herd they recently introduced up on some Larimer County Open Space north of Ft. Collins. Ft. Niobrara NWR in northern Nebraska also has a bison herd, but I think most bison in the United States are held on private ranches. In addition to the National Bison Herd, I also believe different agencies/sites/private parties do share between each other as well, if the herd gets too large for the area they have for example. "Perhaps a path forward for future generations has been found." Today it seems the "creative" solution for transforming the land Steve, is ripping it out with a bulldozer, covering the scar with cement and planting a building on it. One of the biggest fears in the "conservation world" is that, as more generations are raised in cities, their connection to the land is lost and the value placed on conservation shrinks. Eventually, this country will be led by an entire group of people who's entire "growing up" experience was behind screen. By the time people of my son's generation are old enough to vote and hold office, I wonder, how much of their tax dollars are they going to be willing to spend on preserving and conserving the land? When few, if any of the people have ever spent any time in the great outdoors, the value of those great outdoors decreases exponentially. Aldo Leopold lamented that he was glad that he would "never be young without wild country to be young in." The wilderness has been virtually, if not literally, completely conquered, what is the next phase...I shudder to think.