Free at last!

We had a couple of nice, cool evenings when we could keep the windows open and sleep under the blanket. I’m happy to see an abundant population of fireflies out in the field. Even with the colder weather, I was amazed to wake up to fog on Thursday morning. I couldn’t believe there was that much moisture in the air. It was beautiful. Made me want to burst into a song from Oklahoma!


The fifth oak and apple trees in the morning fog.



The south garden on the same morning

The orioles have fledged. I see a father oriole feeding juveniles every day. On Friday, there were two juveniles competing for one dad’s attention, from which I inferred that that nest must have fledged two offspring. I haven’t seen a female feeding fledglings yet. Maybe her job is over when the babies start flying.

Father and fledgling at the feeder

Dad eating grape jelly

The hummingbirds are frequent visitors to the feeder. I got a rare picture of two hummingbirds feeding at the same time. It is more common to see one chase another one away or one waiting while another drinks.

Two hummingbirds at the feeder at once. This hardly ever happens.

More often than not, once chases the other away (cool action shot, no?)

Standing room only: one hummingbird drinks while another waits at the top of the crook.

Late Thursday the backordered electric netting finally arrived. Hilda and I put it up Friday morning. I spent a lot of time in the middle of the night this week worrying about how to fix it so we could get in and out and about how difficult it was likely to be to get the posts into the rock-hard ground. Neither worry proved to have foundation. We put eyelets on the side of the coop and tied the end posts to them with string that came in the package. Hilda had the idea of putting in two short pieces of PVP pipe into the ground so the end post would slide easily in and out.  And that was that. Each post went into the ground with two metal rods connected by a horizontal bar. Had the ground been soft, we could have pushed them in by foot, but the cross piece lent itself nicely to the hammer. We put the net off to the south side. When the chickens ruin the grass there, we will reposition it to the north side. We got the solar power unit out and read the directions. The black clamp was supposed to go to a ground rod at least 1.5’ long. Shoot. We didn’t have one. I consulted Terry, who produced a piece of copper pipe. I drove it as far as I could into the ground. When I started bending the end of the pipe, Terry took over, but he didn’t get it much farther in. Then I had to learn about the voltmeter. I thought the power wasn’t working, but it turned out that the light is dim and the current is pulsed. Once I figured that out, I verified that the wires were charged with 3000 volts just like they were supposed to be.

The electric netting (wires run through the plastic strands) and our shade shelters

The end post is held by PVC pipes in the ground and tied to eyelets
in the side of the coop (there's a second eyelet at the top).
The ground rod for the power supply is at the right of the fence post.

We set up two shade shelters for the chickens because it gets so hot in the sun. We also left the cage inside the fence so they would have the outside perches and a familiar place.

With the fencing up, we pulled the cage back from the door. And nothing happened. Nigella looked through the door, but wouldn’t move. Hilda finally went into the coop to shoo the girls out. Ina went first, followed by Jennifer and Clarissa.  And then they all ran back in. After running in and out a couple of times, they discovered clover on either side of where the cage had been. They ate for a little while, but something spooked them, and they retreated inside. They don’t seem to like the direct sun too much.

Nigella: I'm not going out there.

Ina: Fine. I'll go.

And back in again

Hey! There's fresh clover out here!

One of my fond childhood memories is of feeding watermelon rinds to my grandmother’s chickens. Hilda had cleaned some watermelon Friday afternoon, and we put the rinds out for the chickens. That caused some excitement! They came out to eat, but showed a preference for the rinds in the shade. Hilda moved the rinds so they were all in the shade of the plywood we put on top of the cage.

Hilda moves the watermelon rinds to the shade.

Ina has to be above the others, always.

They hung out pretty close to the coop for the first day. They were all in the coop at bedtime, so all we had to do was shut the door.

They all charged out in a hurry when I opened the door Saturday morning. They explored their new freedom by flapping and chasing each other in circles. I suppose they are establishing the social order in the new space. Saturday was cloudy (but no rain), and the girls spent a lot of their time outside. We all went out Saturday afternoon, and just to be safe, we put the girls in the coop with the cage at the door for ventilation. They were not excited about going in.

They came right out when we got home. By the time Hilda and Dad were eating supper on the deck, the chickens were all the way down to the end of the run. My parents had some good laughs as they watched the chickens. As my mother described it, “They’d come out a little way and then realize how far they had gotten from the coop and rush back in.” They were totally not ready for bed at 8:00. I tried to get them in by myself, but two ran out for every one that went in. Hilda and I had to work together to get them into the coop. I kept a hand in front of the coop door while Hilda herded the delinquents.

Hilda was up early this morning to let the chickens out. When she checked on them a little while later, one of the Dominques was outside the fence! Ellie was very distressed to be separated from the flock and ran back and forth outside the fence line. Worst of all was that when Hilda tried to pick her up to return her to the enclosure, she went right through the fence even though the electricity was on. Her feathers apparently protect her from the charge. It has only happened once so far, but it convinced us that we can’t leave them out when we’re gone. We are hoping that they will get big enough that they won’t be able to fit through the holes in the netting when full grown.

We replaced all the bedding in the coop this morning. We probably don’t need to do that every week, but I wanted to install the final (I hope) convenience in the coop: bedpans. Two black plastic trays under the perch will make it easy to get the poopiest wood chips out of the coop. So far, the chickens roost (judging from the accumulation of droppings) on the east side of the perch by the window. I assume that as they get larger, they will take up more of the space.

Installation of the bedpans under the perch

One more nature picture before I sign off. Hilda spotted a great spangled fritillary on the grass this morning. It didn’t seem very active. I picked it up and saw from its extended proboscis that it had been drinking. I put it on the butterfly weed, where it happily drank nectar even though butterfly weed is supposed to be a monarch host plant. I guess the fritillary didn’t read the book.

Great spangled fritillary on butterfly weed. The thin, black proboscis is visible if you look carefully.