Chickens are birds too...

A rainy, early November day is certainly a cliché in this area.  Today is living up to the cliché. The sky is dark and gloomy, bringing down many fall leaves.  In this weather no photos were possible, which goes to explain why I’m posting a photo of several of my chickens.

The chickens had just discovered my bird feeders, no small feat in itself, as my back deck is well above head high and only accessed from the ground by 8 steps.  They apparently wandered up the steps and so found themselves at the bird feeders.  They soon began to clean the deck of seed tossed out by the wild birds. I have yet to see the chickens up on the table where several of the feeders are located. However, I am thinking that won’t be far away.

Once up on the back the deck the chickens discovered I was inside, with cats and Baby Dog. They thought that was pretty interesting, too, and probably wondered why they couldn’t come in as well. One or the other of them has tried to follow me in the front door more than once but end up being deterred by said cats and dog.

Chickens, I have learned, are much smarter than they are usually given credit for. They are not dumbbells.  And, they have a wide variety of sounds, each with meaning.  Doodle, my rooster, always alerts the girls to airborne danger—two days ago it was a Cooper’s hawk—and how close the danger is. When something is very close, the sound is more insistent and the girls (and often the cats, too) run for cover.  Other times, he warns that danger is near but not immediately overhead and that’s enough to stop the hens in their tracks to eyeball the potential intruder until they decide if hiding will be needed. The chickens are nearly as much fun to watch as the wild birds.  

A rainy, early November day is certainly a cliché in this area.  Today is living up to the cliché. The sky is dark and gloomy, bringing down many fall leaves.  In this weather no photos were possible, which goes to explain why I’m posting a photo of several of my chickens.

The chickens had just discovered my bird feeders, no small feat in itself, as my back deck is well above head high and only accessed from the ground by 8 steps.  They apparently wandered up the steps and so found themselves at the bird feeders.  They soon began to clean the deck of seed tossed out by the wild birds. I have yet to see the chickens up on the table where several of the feeders are located. However, I am thinking that won’t be far away.

Once up on the back the deck the chickens discovered I was inside, with cats and Baby Dog. They thought that was pretty interesting, too, and probably wondered why they couldn’t come in as well. One or the other of them has tried to follow me in the front door more than once but end up being deterred by said cats and dog.

Chickens, I have learned, are much smarter than they are usually given credit for. They are not dumbbells.  And, they have a wide variety of sounds, each with meaning.  Doodle, my rooster, always alerts the girls to airborne danger—two days ago it was a Cooper’s hawk—and how close the danger is. When something is very close, the sound is more insistent and the girls (and often the cats, too) run for cover.  Other times, he warns that danger is near but not immediately overhead and that’s enough to stop the hens in their tracks to eyeball the potential intruder until they decide if hiding will be needed. The chickens are nearly as much fun to watch as the wild birds.  

Day hawk encounter

Spa day for the girls, a dust bath

Although I’ve been looking unsuccessfully for nighthawks, I did have an encounter with a “day hawk” last evening.

I’ve been letting the chickens out in the evenings when I get home. After issues with raccoons, fox and opossums, I no longer feel it is safe for them to roam free when I’m not at home.  They were not happy with this new directive, so we compromised. I let them out when I get home, and since they can’t tell time, they don’t seem to mind that their roaming is only limited to an hour or so each evening.

Last night they’d only been out about 30 minutes when I heard Doodle, my Rhode Island Red rooster, give his alarm call.  Now Doodle is a vigilant rooster. He keeps a wary eye on anything that might be trouble for his girls. To him, this can mean the neighbor’s cat is crossing the forest, anxious to get back home to dinner, or it might be a very high and distant turkey vulture that’s passing not very near by. But this alarm call sounded a bit different, so I went out to investigate.

Doodle was standing in the middle of the driveway, all puffed up, looking as large as he could.  Since he is a Rhode Island Red, this is pretty impressive.  He stands almost knee-high, with large spurs and lots of feathers. The girls were all scurrying to hide under the nearest bush.  At first I didn’t see any cause for all this alarm, but then I heard a sound—kek-kek-kek-kek—coming from an oak tree not very far from the edge of the cabin.  A Cooper’s Hawk.

It didn’t take very long before my presence made the hawk nervous.  It left its tree, glided past the house through the forest and disappeared.  I was left to be impressed by my chickens.  After all those years of domestication and being hatched at a hatchery somewhere, growing up with only me as their mother, their instincts are still well-honed.  Isn’t that a beautiful thing?  They are still birds who know what an alarm by their rooster means and know the difference between the near-innocuous alarm raised by the sight of a distant turkey vulture and the danger posed by a nearby Cooper’s Hawk.  The girls rock!