In a fowl mood

It’s now obvious that the eggs Maggie and Tu-Tu have been sitting on are never going to hatch, so we ejected the pair of them from the nest box to join the others in the garden.   This may account for Maggie’s bad mood.

Our friendly neighbourhood collared dove decided to reconnoitre the food situation.   He glided in towards the garden, spotted the chickens and glided out.   A little later he came for another look.   This time he landed on the wall – a good vantage point to survey the scene.   The chickens were all having a conference in the corner, so he seized the opportunity to come right into the garden and head for the dish of corn.   Big mistake!   Maggie spotted him and charged, feathers fluffed;  she was furious!  The dove took off as if the hounds of hell were after him, and he wasn’t far off the mark at that.   She was so cross she then went and attacked Fizz for not doing his job properly, and leaving flock protection to her.

A bit later on everyone was peacefully decimating the lawn, when all of a sudden Punk attacked Maggie.   She must have been out of her tiny mind!   It rapidly turned into full-blown fisticuffs, then Rebecca  joined in too.   Feathers flew in all directions and the rest of the flock legged it towards the fight so they could get a better look, or maybe even join in.   Maggie will take the world on – she backs down for nobody, no matter who, no matter how big.  The whole thing stopped as quickly as it started, but Maggie was still huffy.   There was a moment when it looked as if she was going have a go at Irene, but decided not to bother.

Maggie

We suspect all this was an attempted coup to try and oust Maggie from second place in the pecking order.   After all, for the past few weeks she had spent more time in the coop than out of it.   If so, it didn’t succeed.