Visitations

 Last week, apropos of nothing, we began having visitors to the ledge outside our sixteenth-floor windows.

The first visitor was a decent-sized Blackbird, who walked the fifteen or so feet along the ledge, looking for morsels of food and little bugs and what-not.

The second visitor was a crow. Having not been face-to-face with a full grown crow before, I was astonished at how big it was.



I was even more astonished at how big its beak alone was. I'm familiar with the business ends of birds, having been around turkeys and having held a hawk. But this seemed to be as big as both of my thumbs and built pretty solidly. And it looked like an all purpose kind of tool, pointier than the blunt beak of a seed cracker and more mechanically solid than the flesh tearing hook of a raptor.

While we watched, the crow turned to speak to us. In one comment, it looked through the glass and with a very ostentatious display of leaning forward and downward, it made a quiet almost cooing sound.

In a second comment, it again looked through the glass, and made the classic caw of its specie. (This is what it is doing in the picture below). It was...vehement.

The next visitor came a day or two later. It was a Black Vulture, an elegant and imposing bird. It made a spectacular swooping approach to the ledge, then alighted very delicately. Then, in a classic display of avian behavior, it squatted down and shot a white gush of feces onto the parking garage below.

The Vulture strutted along the ledge, pausing occasionally to examine us through the glass. There is a large community of vultures in the area, and we see them constantly in the sky, soaring on the updrafts and currents shaped by the office buildings in the neighborhood. But this was the first time in the almost six months we've been here that one deigned to land on our ledge.

Not a pigeon. Not one bit.

The Black Vulture is a handsome and imposing bird with its deep grey wrinkled head devoid of feathers. Its beak is notable for the perforate nostrils, with an opening passing completely through the undivided beak. They are about the same mass as Turkey Vultures, though they tend to have smaller wingspans.

To my mind, the dark plumage, grey head and grey neck make the Black Vulture more dignified in appearance that its relative, the Turkey Vulture. The Turkey Vulture is probably better known than the Black because of its garish, rather gruesome pink coloration, oddly shaped head and short, ivory beak stuck to the front of its head.

Fun fact: The name "Vulture" comes from the Latin term for 'tearer.' Yeah, think about that for a minute.

Who owns the ledge? Me. I do.

Sorry for the poor photo quality.  The vulture wasn't cooperating.

We were a bit concerned that this was a commentary on our project.

No, it's just a Black Vulture. Looking in the window at us.
No further significance.

Seek Assistance From A Medical Professional If You Experience An Irruption Lasting More Than Four Months

So sure enough, I was blasting down that same road a couple of days ago, and there, big as life, was the Snowy Owl. In roughly the same tree as where I saw it a few months ago, give or take a tree or two. I slowed down to take a look at it, and it swooped down across the field to the west. As I've noted before elsewhere, raptors don't take kindly to being inspected. It kinda disappeared in the glare of the lowering sun, so I drove a ways further and turned down a side road where I could look back to where I had been.

It appeared to be right on the crest of the little hillock of pasture, tending to something on the grass...probably a morsel of prey it had swooped down on. I watched for a few minutes, but it was too far away to see much other than a small white shape engaged in bird business. So I backtracked down the road a ways, then turned around with a better idea of where to look.

By the time I got parked on the shoulder, the owl was perched high in a bare skeletal tree twenty or thirty feet above the ground. It looked at me for a moment, probably annoyed for the disturbance and attention, then turned to the west and flew away. That's almost four months this bird--not a native to our area--has been in residence. That's quite a treat for us.

Irruption

We caught a glimpse of a bird a couple of weeks ago along the back road which has become our default route to the city. Mary saw it; I was driving, so I only caught a fleeting impression of it. It was starkly white against the grey winterscape of bare trees and fallow fields,

Our first thought was of a seabird blown far inland by the recent rough changes in the weather, but it was solitary; then we recalled the other brilliantly white bird we had seen nearby, the Cattle Egret. But somehow, this didn't seem to be that.

Yesterday morning I drove the same section of road, and crowning one of the jagged trees that arched over the road was the largest, whitest bird I've ever seen. It's hard to describe why it appeared so white; maybe it was the dull grey sky it had for a backdrop. I've seen bigger birds, and I've seen whiter birds (though not by much) but this bird took some kind of prize.

With what in hindsight was a foolish recklessness, I slammed on the brakes, pulled over onto the grassy shoulder, put on my hazard lights, and jumped out of the car for a better look.

Stopping put me square in the bird's blind spot. And as I discovered alongside the wintry backroads of South Dakota three years ago, big raptors don't much care for having people in their blindspots. It took wing in an instant.

Fortunately for me, it flew across the road and away in the direction I was facing. It swooped down low over the frosty ground before rising up to settle on a slender branch near the top of the tree. The flare of its tail and spread of its wings revealed no trace of pigmentation that I could discern.

Only as I write this do I remember the pair of binoculars that have rattled around under the seat of the car for a couple of months now. This would have been a good time to make use of them, I believe...

When I report my sighting to Mary, confirming the presence of the mystery bird, she recalls a salient detail from the previous week's sighting that did not register at the time absent a broader context--the white bird dropping directly from its perch to the ground below--likely seizing a furry morsel from the dry grass.

Yep. Pretty sure it's a Snowy Owl. Like Harry Potter's 'Hedwig.' But I really can't tell you much about it from the roadside a good quarter-mile from where it now sits. But Snowy Owls are one of those boreal birds that undergoes irruptions*. Irruptions are Malthusian events, driven by the ebbing and flowing of populations of prey and the things that prey feed upon. They are not migrations, but relatively brief and unpredictable forays beyond normal territorial ranges.

Snowy Owls are not entirely unknown in our area; an irruption over 2013-2014 brought many Snowy Owls to the mid-Atlantic area, and apparently a Snowy Owl sighting is a big deal to be able to add to your birding life list. I feel very fortunate for my early morning encounter. Hell, it was the high point of my day, and it came at 7:35 in the morning!

*Interesting word, with an intersting etymology.

Seven Crows

We were puttering around beside the big shed as the barely-warm January sun got tangled up in the treetops. Somewhere off to the south, down in the valley by the bottomlands, there was a fierce cry, the single piercing alarm note of a crow. It repeated over and over again as it drew closer, setting off the turkeys in a mad dash, and continued as the bird finally came into sight, winging fiercely over the garden. It wheeled overhead, and suddenly its call was joined by another voice, then another, and when it had finally settled down into the top of the poplar tree above the graveyard, seven crows were perched throughout the tree, bobbing and calling raucously.

We watched them for a moment, puzzled by this mysterious and cacophonous summoning. Then, to our amazement and to the furious rage of the crows, a hawk—bigger than any hawk I can recall seeing around here—took off from the weeds at the base of the poplar, and alighted in its lowest branch, directly below the murderous bunch. At this, the crows erupted, swirling and diving in a roiling cloud of angry voices. The hawk appeared almost bemused, certainly not particularly disturbed by the display. It adjusted its stance, fluffed out its feathers, spread its tail wide, then hopped to another branch before dropping back down to the ground. The crows dispersed in an angry boiling mass, circling about to cast malevolent glances backwards at their enemy of legend.

The hawk is big, no doubt. It poked about briefly the general vicinity of the graveyard and the pines. By its size, I’d guess it’s a hen, and I hope it’s the hen from a year and a half ago, or perhaps one of her eyasses, come back to nest in the ancestral aerie. There’s still a lot of it left in the big pine tree, certainly enough to make the nucleus of a new nest for a pair.

The big hawk’s appearance a couple of days ago has spooked the chickens for sure; they’ve spent much of their days since cowering inside their house, only dodging out for food or water ever so briefly then ducking back into safety. I feel their pain, and would be more than happy to keep them locked inside if necessary, but they have cover and better wits than some of their predecessors, and have the turkeys around to keep a sharp eye on the sky on their behalf. They can deal with it. I think it would be more than a fair trade if we can watch a nesting pair raise and fledge a second batch of little hawks in our backyard.

The Things You See in Traffic

Yesterday I’m heading home in light Friday evening rush hour traffic, minding my own business, when a raptor of some kind (really didn’t get a good look, what with the driving 70 mph in rush hour and all) lumbers across the sky just a hundred yards or so ahead of me. 

That’s not what caught my attention; what caught my attention was the fluorescent-orange koi gripped in its talons, easily the same size as the bird itself. Somebody’s pond is down one, I suspect. And that hawk (or whatever) is gonna dine well for a day or two.

The alternate explanation, of course, is the children's book version, where the hawk is simply letting his water-bound little buddy have a chance to finally see the whole world from a different vantage point. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what was going on.

Pon Farr among the Meleagris

Turkey sex is some weird shit, yo.

Code Switching, the vertebrates edition

A few mornings ago, I was out early tending to the birds. Nearby stood one of our turkey hens; in particular, the hen who hatched a poult and two keets earlier in the summer. She was simply standing there among the weeds and flowers--as turkey hens spend much of their days--her young charges milling around about her feet in a busy bustle of chirping and squeaking.

Then she made a single sound, a sound I had heard many times before. When I usually hear this and see the response it evokes, it brings Coleridge to mind:

"We listened and looked sideways up!
Fear at my heart, as at a cup,
My life-blood seemed to sip!"*

I looked at her, and as I expected from hearing the sound she made, she had her head cocked sideways and was looking skyward. She had not moved a muscle, and her young had not moved in response to her noise, nor had any other of the fowl milling about the yard. I followed her gaze upwards. A lone great blue heron was flapping majestically in their distinctive diagonal path across the open backyard, just at treetop level. By this time, the hen had gone back to browsing on the seeds of the tall grass, ignoring the sky.

I knew what she had said. I understood what she had said. Her single noise was noting the presence of the heron, but at the same time, not sounding the alarm she as she would have if a hawk, eagle or other raptor or large bird had intruded. Had she voiced the same sound as an alarm, the young would have either run for cover or huddled beneath her, and all the other birds in the open would have found cover in an instant. But not in this case.

She communicated a simple comment, and I understood what she meant.

Damn.

*Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," Part the Third. 204-206

The Hawks

It’s been some time since that early morning when we were working in the far garden and first noticed the odd, persistent noise coming from up in the pines.

We set aside what we were doing and went to investigate, having learned some years ago that unusual noises are unusual for a reason, and generally bear investigation. At the edge of the great corridor in the pines, in the first rank of towering trees bordering the gravel driveway, high above the ground was a rough nest of twigs, branches and pine needles.
 
Our old, familiar breeding pair of hawks—I still don’t know the exact type of hawk—who we have seen in the vicinity of the pines off and on over recent years, was in residence. With them were at least two young.

A brief digression: A baby hawk is called an ‘Eyas.’ The plural form is ‘Eyasses.’ The female mother is simply known as a ‘hen,’ while the father is called a ‘Tierce*.’

With binoculars, we could intermittently see two small, fuzzy heads with bright, fierce eyes and angry little beaks peering through the branches. If I made a small clicking sound, they would look about alertly for the source. From day to day we could monitor their progress and growth amid all the squeaking and crying and calling; we moved a pair of chaise longues nearby to better observe the aerie at length in comfort. It was hypnotic to observe them for extended periods, peering almost vertically into the canopy where they flitted from branch to branch and tree to tree.

The Eyasses became more bird-like with each passing day, at first exploring tentatively. They would fall off branches awkwardly, tumbling briefly before unfurling their novel wings and converting from ballistic objects to aerodynamic bodies. Clearly, at the outset, flying does not come naturally or easily to them; it’s not their first choice or natural mode. Sitting still in the warm sun and having hot meals brought to them is their obvious preference. But all good things must come to an end.

Within about ten days, maybe two weeks, the Eyasses were flying freely and skillfully among the pines. At one point there erupted a torrent of calls in multiple voices from the aerie.

We investigated, assuming from the character of the noise that a feeding was happening. In fact, there was, though the actual meal was obscured from our view. One hawk, age and gender uncertain, perched on the edge of the nest, tearing bits of flesh and gulping them down voraciously. A second hawk approached, eager to join in the feast. But the first would have none of that. One angry cry, one swift shove with an open foot, and the interloper simply slides backwards off the branch, falling a good five feet before remembering those things attached at its shoulders and taking flight with a cry of indignation.

Now we hear the plaintive squeaks ranging farther and farther afield from the aerie. The binding ties are loosening, and the eyasses must be near fully fledged. What becomes of juvenile hawks? Do they stay in the neighborhood? Must they compete with their parents over a limited territory, with the result that the young must move along to more sparsely inhabited realms?

Yesterday, I think I only heard the distinctive cry once; Mary says she heard them a few times during the day. They seem to be spreading out, moving farther from the nest. I keep listening, waiting, thinking I’ll be lucky enough to catch another glimpse of them perched in the branches of the pines. We’ll see what happens; this gets filed along with the two other significant hawk-related sitings—the migratory kettle in, what, 2010? And last January’s close encounter in the Turkey yard. What beautiful birds they are.

* According to Helen MacDonald in "H is for Hawk," this comes from the root of 'third,' as the male hawk is a third smaller than the female hawk.

Close Encounters...

It was nose-hair freezing this morning when I went out in my long underwear and slippers to warm up the car—about six below.
I stepped out onto the porch, and something in the turkey pen caught my eye. The birds were milling around as they usually do when it first starts to get light and they see one of us come outside, hoping that maybe we're bringing breakfast and warm water. But one of them was hunched down on the roost all alone, looking small and haggard and bedraggled and pathetic. We had been keeping the guineas inside the shed during the bitter cold, and I was worried that maybe the extreme cold had stressed one of them past the point of no return.

But it wasn't a guinea. I looked at it, and it looked up at me. It was a Red-Tailed Hawk. On the turkey roost all by itself. Inside the netted turkey pen.

The milling about wasn't because I had come outside; it was because THERE WAS A FRIGGIN RED-TAILED HAWK SITTING ON THE TURKEY ROOST.

I went back inside, dropped the car keys, called to Mary to grab the camera, her coat and the fireplace gloves, and hustle outside ASAP.

When I came back outside (still in long underwear and slippers, mind you) the hawk took off and immediately flew into the net roof; he hung there briefly, then dropped to the ground, regained his footing, and flew to another roost in the distant end of the pen. The commotion his passage created among the pen's residents was remarkable for its intensity and fervor.

I snatched the bird net—a long-handled fisherman's landing net with the net bag shortened by half, which I had just gotten a couple of weeks ago to make guinea wrangling a little easier. I went into the pen, and slowly approached the hawk on the roost, looking it directly in its brilliant dark eyes and talking to it quietly the whole time.

 As I got closer, it went into full threat-display mode*, beak agape, eyes filled with rage, and wings held up and spread. It held this posture, never breaking eye contact, even as I slowly lowered the net over it on the roost. It actually rotated backwards, sliding off the roost until it hung by one ebony talon upside-down, never altering it defiant display. It dropped gently onto its back, and I held it to he ground supine, while Mary brought the foundry gloves over.

Holding the landing net down with one hand, I slipped the gloves on one at a time, then slowly reached under the net to secure both of the hawk's shins in my left hand. We never broke eye contact (the eyes are right next to the supremely daunting looking pointy bits), and once I had a firm grasp of its legs, I lifted the net away. (When you have them by the shins, their hearts and minds will follow). I expected a flurry of flapping and struggling, but it never altered its posture a whit; wings spread defiantly, beak agape yet never striking.

It seemed strangely frozen, and perhaps it was exhausted and frightened; if it had misunderestimated the resolve of the turkeys, it may have had a rough time of it before I showed up and intervened. But there was no obvious evidence of a bird-on-bird struggle, and no one on either team showed any overt signs of damage.

Mary took a few pictures of the magnificent bird, and I walked it slowly into the back yard, where I had no option but to place it on the ground on its back, wings still spread wide. It
would not look away from me and would not turn its back on me; it lay inverted until I had been inside the house for half a minute. Then it righted itself, and in one swift and balletic motion, took to the air and swooped down the yard and away into the frosty pre-dawn forest.

*At that very instant, I realized that in my whole life I had never realized that the Great Seal of the United States  presents the eagle in a 'threat display' posture. That's not exactly flattering, is it?

Herons, plural

On my way to work today I saw something I had never seen before—a flock, albeit a small one, of great blue herons. Three of them, to be exact, flying in formation across the low grey sky.

Recently I have seen a pair of the smaller green heron, noteworthy for their brightly colored legs and feet, in the vicinity of the pond at GMU. They patrol the shore and shallows and nearby woods, and fly spectacularly. But they are no match for the great blues, unmistakable with their deep keels, long curved necks, deadly bills, gracefully extended legs and almost comically graceful flight made possible with the slightest exertion of their wingtips.

Earlier this week, a great blue took off from a pond next to where I work, then slowly, gracefully, ponderously gained both speed and altitude until it soared into the treetops nearby and disappeared. With each flap of its long wings, its scale appeared to change; it seemed to grow larger, more massive, with each stroke. By the time it reached the woods, it had transformed from a shore bird into a massive, commanding master of the sky.

I cannot envision anything but ancient pterodactyls when I see them in flight; slow, steady, unfaltering, their gaze fixed to a point on the far horizon. For the longest time, it always appeared to me that they only flew on paths diagonal to roadways; I never saw a heron cross a road perpendicular nor fly along one that I could recall. But recently I think I did see one cross a road at a right angle, and it seemed unnatural.

But I am sure that before today, I have only seen the great blue heron as a solitary traveler.

The Whippoorwill

This evening, we sat out in the garden in the twilight and listened to the coming night sounds. The local whippoorwill began his singing, and after a few introductory passes of sixty or seventy repetitions, repeated his call two-hundred and eighty nine times before pausing. After a pause of about six beats, he began again; but I stopped counting.

The Birds we have here...

American Crow, American Goldfinch, American Robin, American Tree Sparrow, Bald Eagle, Barn Owl, Barn Swallow, Black Vulture, Black-capped Chickadee, Blue Jay, Brown-headed Cowbird, Canada Goose, Carolina Chickadee, Cattle Egret, Cedar Waxwing, Chimney Swift, Common Raven, Cooper's Hawk, Downy Woodpecker, Eastern Bluebird, European Starling, Gray Catbird, Great Blue Heron, Great Horned Owl, Green Heron, House Finch, House Sparrow, House Wren, Indigo Bunting, Mourning Dove, Northern Cardinal, Pileated Woodpecker, Purple Finch, Purple Martin, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Red-shouldered Hawk, Red-tailed Hawk, Red-winged Blackbird, Rock Dove, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Ruffed Grouse, Scarlet Tanager, Sharp-shinned Hawk, Turkey-Vulture, Whip-poor-will & Wild Turkey. Plus a kettle of migrating hawks, which counts for something.

Cattle Egret

A few days ago, we were driving through the county to visit our friend's little dairy, when something moving off in the distance caught our attention.

It was a bird, brilliant white in the low-slanting sunlight of the morning, flying gracefully and purposefully towards the northwest. Both its brightness and it's flight pattern were distinctive, but at such a distance we had a difficult time identifying it. As we arrived, it flew behind the crest of the hill and disappeared.

As we went about our business at the dairy, my curiosity got the better of me. After asking permission—of course—I unchained the twin metal gates and quietly as I could, entered the adjoining field. Securing the gate behind me, I walked cross-country slowly and deliberately through the field, among the dozens of cows and calf grazing there, towards the crest, scanning the horizon as I went for any sign of the bird.

As I reached the ridge, there was a flash of white downhill to my left. There the bird stood in all its brilliance. It was tall and elegant, and as best I could see, pure white from wingtip to wingtip and head to tail. It moved with great poise and consideration through the russet grasses, plucking seeds and insects as it went. It studied its surroundings with great care and diligence, and seemed utterly serene.

From time to time, it would take flight for a few yards, moving to a new patch of grass to feed. And when it arrived in a new location, it paid no attention to the residents in place—calf, cow, steer or border collie. It simply went about its business with great focus. At one point, a calf, seemingly annoyed by the bird, charged it and ran after it for a few yards; the bird simply flew just a few feet ahead of the calf until it tired of the effort. It did the same for the border collie, who seemed to feel this avian intruder was not showing the proper respect.

But in a few minutes, the most amazing thing occurred. The same tan calf (or an identical looking one) slowly moved closer to the bird. For a brief moment, the two stood motionless, face-to-face, addressing one another. "There is no veil."

Then they simply went about their respective businesses.

It turns out the bird was a Cattle Egret, not common to this area, but not unknown. We are on the edge of their natural range. They are well known for their commensal relationship with livestock, feeding on insects drawn to and stirred up by the livestock. The livestock neither particularly benefit from, nor are harmed by, their presence. They seem to have no natural distrust for the animals surrounding them that dwarf them, but instead get along with them in an admirable display of neighborliness.

Its graceful flight, brilliant plumage and regal, assured presence made the Cattle Egret one of the most impressive birds I have ever seen in person. I'm very glad I decided to take that little walk into the field to see what I could see.

An odd snapshot

A quiet Sunday morning.
A lone turkey hen stands in the living room, staring intently at the stereo and singing along with Yo-Yo Ma.
Over her intense protestations, I must physically carry her out of the house and return her to the flock in the yard.

And Slowly They Appeared, One By One...

We heard the hawk’s cry from far above us at the chicken yard—keening, lonely, intense, insistent. The hard blue September sky was brilliantly clear, and that lone hawk circled far above us, riding the thermal that rose from the stream valley like the more common buzzards.
It was not a menacing presence, to us or to our flock of chickens. They squawked in minor concern, but went about their business without the great consternation they would have displayed had they been truly menaced by a hawk or owl in the immediate neighborhood. A brief time later, we saw the hawk again, circling farther overhead. Then another. And another.
Suddenly, we realized we were seeing the migration of a kettle of Broad-Winged Hawks, members of the Buteo family which migrates from North America, as far north as Alberta, to the tropics. At one point, we could see at least two-dozen individual hawks, briefly pausing just to our south; they appeared to be calling to other hawks in the area before reforming into a long, broad column flying south again.
The sky was too brilliant, and the hawks too distant, for us to discern any detail in individual birds. They were thick, muscular birds, riding the air with grace and power, and they were most deliberate in their travels. Shortly they will be over the Smoky Mountains, as they follow the deflective air currents along the Appalachians towards their winter homes far to our south. Their migrations are an annual event for many bird watchers, and nearby, Shenandoah National Park is a prime migration viewing point—for those not fortunate enough to be able so see them from their back yards.
Interestingly, Monarch butterflies are often seen migrating at the same time. They share the same flyways for the same reasons—seeking the favorable air currents to take them to their wintering grounds in Mexico. We did not see monarchs this time, but have seen them migrating years ago, in Arlington.
They clustered around our butterfly bushes, and slowly ascended the column of air. As we watched them rise, we realized we could see an unbroken line of butterflies as far up into the sky as they could possibly be seen, and they trailed off to both the north and south. They find their way to a place they have never been before, the valley where they were conceived and where their ancestors were conceived for generations out of mind.

A Fitting Denouement

The sorghum ale has found it's target demographic at last.

I've taken to giving the chickens a bottle or two of it in the afternoon, 'round bout the time humans would be knocking off for a brewski or two. They don't care much for the head, and the carbonation seems to perplex them something awful, but once it settles down a bit, they're on it like white on rice.

Carbohydrates, B vitamins, yeasty sediment? What's not to like? And a chicken with a gizzard-load of homebrew is just a happier chicken, you know?

A Few Words About Turkeys

When we started looking into raising turkeys early this year, we kept coming across a few consistent threads of turkey lore—that they are stupid; that poults have to be shown what to eat at first; that turkeys will stampede at the slightest provocation, trampling and suffocating each other; that turkeys will drown in a heavy rain; that turkeys break their eggs because they lay them standing up, and so on.

I beg to differ.

Our experience may be uncharacteristic, because we are raising Narragansetts, a breed closely derived from the Eastern Wild Turkey. These are not the grotesquely deformed 'Butterballs' which have had their natural avian grace replaced with bland tasteless tumors of white meat. Narragansetts are spectacularly beautiful birds, large, stately and graceful, with woodland markings. They recall, from deep within, what it is to be a real bird. And when the Toms display, they are the very strutting epitome of what any first-grader or buckle-hatted Pilgrim would recognize as a Turkey—gobble, wattle, snood and all.

Unlike chickens, turkeys have a social structure, which implies they have some awareness of individuals. They have elegant, stylized, sometimes comical display and courtship behaviors. They communicate with one another and with the rafter—the term for a group of turkeys—as a whole. They are muscular fliers, and frequently leap into the air and wheel about for no apparent reason, often half a dozen bursting into flight nearly simultaneously.

They are curious and inquisitive, and have a broad vocabulary of vocalizations that seem to express a wide range of moods, from quiet contentment to pique, alarm and distress. A certain distinctive cry will make them all look in a particular direction and freeze for several seconds. They listen attentively to the flock of chickens, who are out of sight and some distance away across the ridge, and will echo and amplify calls of distress or alarm they may hear from their galliform brethren.

They are generally tranquil and appear thoughtful, unlike the frantic and seemingly pointless activity of chickens. They will cock their heads sideways and quizzically watch an airplane far overhead. I would go as far as to say they are affectionate, recalling how when they were younger (and mercifully smaller) as many as seven or nine young turkeys would hop onto my shoulders, back, neck and extended arms until I couldn't support any more. Once there, they would pick at my hair and ears, cooing quietly all the while.

As a way of showing our appreciation for these magnificent birds, we have gone all out in revamping their habitat. We began with significantly expanding the footprint of their enclosure into the adjacent forest on several sides. We then replaced the standard tee-stakes and four-foot welded wire fence with ten-foot black iron pipes driven two-and-a-half feet into the ground and five-foot welded wire.

We then replaced the lightweight netting roof with 2" mesh aviary netting, held up with/suspended from a complex rope web. Large ropes run from tree to tree outside the enclosure, and smaller ropes run from the tops of the pipes, connected to the suspensors through the netting with carabiners. A final run of rope traverses the perimeter of the fence, providing an edge for the netting to be pulled over. It is a spectacular flight cage, a clear-sky tent of swooping catenaries and vast volumes for the birds to play in, with rough-cedar roosts for them to sleep on under the stars.

It is a real pleasure to share the place with them. Many an evening we have spent just sitting, quietly watching them go about their gentle routine of strolling about their enclosure nibbling the odd bit of forage, preening, stretching like little feathered ballerinas, convulsively dirt-bathing or softly dozing off...

Requiem for a cockerel

The other evening we dined on the first of the chickens which we had raised from chicks. The chicks arrived last April, and the newly-matured cockerels went off for butchering last weekend on Saturday and were in our freezer Sunday. It's a little weird to look at it that way—chicks to meal—but I really haven't felt conflicted in the least.

Every single day when I went out to feed the chickens, or check their water, or make sure they were safe, or any of a thousand other chores I performed on their behalf, I would look at them as individual living animals and know exactly how their lives would end. As Joel Salatin puts it, "...a good life, then one bad day."

Virtually every other chicken I have ever eaten in my life—every drumstick, nugget, finger, roast, et cetera, et cetera, has lived a short, wretched life of misery and suffering. Our cockerels ran around like crazy in the sun and the rain, ate bugs and grass and some of our favorite flowers and garden plants, showed off for one another and the hens, and got to act like real birds of planet earth—hell, they got to fly; how many 21st-century chickens can say that?

To show respect for this cockerel and to appreciate exactly what a home-raised chicken tastes like, we did him up plain and simple: a drizzle of olive oil, some salt and pepper, a little butter in the pan to baste him. We baked him for a little over an hour, and accompanied him with roasted potatoes ( also simple, with salt and pepper only) and some sauteed summer squash fresh from the garden.

His meat was flavorful and toothsome; his bones solid and well-calcified. He was small, a little smaller than a regulation NFL-football, except with drumsticks. Three of us dined on him, with a decent portion left over for another meal. His bones will make another meal by way of stock. He was a real treat, unlike the bland, tasteless, textureless meat that is foisted off on us as "chicken" by the Purdues and Tysons of the world.

We have another dozen or so of his cohort in the freezer. I am looking forward to seeing what they're like.

Orders of Magnitude

A while back, I confessed to dispatching two black snakes who had been harassing our chickens. I threw the limp lifeless body of one snake into the tall grass at the edge of the woods, in order for it to be assimilated by the various and sundry woodland decomposers whose job it is to make such things right.

A few days later, I was walking up the driveway towards the pines when I was startled by a commotion to my left. Out of the deep grasses and scrub a turkey buzzard rose majestically and swooped across the driveway and garden. It grabbed great fistsful of air with its pinions, pulling itself into the sky with unimaginable power and grace, slowly gaining speed and altitude until it disappeared above the pines to the north.

I peered into the grasses from where this pterosaur had launched, and found what looked like a tiny scrap of frayed rope—the few remains of the snake, picked clean of flesh and skin. What the bird with a wingspan greater than my armspan found for sustenance in that tiny morel, and how it discovered it in the first place, astonished me.

The next afternoon, we sat quietly in the front yard, enjoying a leisurely afternoon in the warm sun. All at once, there was a commotion, and a turkey buzzard once again rose from the tall grasses, taking the same trajectory. But something amazing happened: The buzzard flushed a pileated woodpecker from a nearby oak tree, and in its haste, it followed a parallel trajectory with the buzzard. (Normally, a pileated woodpecker is one of the largest birds you will see in the woods, with a two-foot wingspan and a distinctive flight pattern—it is majestic and beautiful with its distinctive brilliant red-white-black plumage). And at the same instance, just before our faces, a few yards away, a ruby-throated hummingbird hovered in mid-flight:

So for one split second, all in the same line of sight, at the same instant—a turkey buzzard, a pileated woodpecker, and a ruby-throated hummingbird.

And they were gone.

Snakery

About a week ago, we noticed that egg production was WAAAY down...just two or three a day, from nine laying hens, and it was affecting both the buffs and the Americaunas equally. We suspected a number of possible variables, as both breeds seem sensitive to minor changes. In no particular order, we considered the new feed we had recently introduced, some minor changes in their living environment, and the possibility of rancid cracked corn, which we hadn't been turning over very quickly.

However, one afternoon Mary was working in the backyard when a ruckus arose from inside the henhouse. When she went to investigate, she was rather surprised to find a large and very well-fed black snake curled up (like he owned the joint) in the small space behind the twin nesting boxes.

Apparently, for the last while, this resourceful snake has had himself his very own vending machine, where he simply waits for an egg to appear, and he merrily gobbles it up. (The presence of really disgusting snake feces in the henhouse litter lends credence to this theory. Apparently a hungry snake can process a whole lot of eggs in short order; they're not like piglets or anything, leaving rosary-bead bulges along his physiology...)

Mary left the snake alone until I got home to see this spectacle. Appropriately begloved, we extricated the sated and dopey snake from his little hidey-hole, and stuffed him in a large sack. We drove him down our lane and released him a reasonable distance away from the henhouse in the hopes that he would forget this cushy little gig in favor of the usual routine of hunting wiley adversaries in the wild.

Egg production is slowly creeping back upwards, and so far, the snake has not reappeared. However, the last few nights the dogs have repeatedly gone on high alert, bolting from the house in furies of barking and snarling, and the musky funk of fox has wafted strong on the breeze...

Never a dull moment.