It's bath time!

The chickens spent a good part of last week trying to dig up my dwarf ornamental cherry tree.  For the most part it was sunny, they had nothing better to do, so why not?

Tu-Tu quietly let them get on with it, watching their progress from the other side of the lawn.   When she judged that they'd got rid of most of the grass and had churned the earth up nicely, she acted.  

Irene, Rebecca and Punk  thought they were digging for worms.  Tu-Tu, however, needed a bath and took advantage of their hard work to get one.   She settled down in a nice little spot next to the tree and began her ablutions.

Maggie thought this was a great idea and came over to join her.  Her big mistake was choosing an area immediately behind Tu-Tu because that's where she kept finding her face.  Buried in Tu-Tu's behind.  Every time either she or Tu-Tu wriggled around in the dry earth, Maggie's face seemed to end up buried in Tu-Tu's exuberant mass of tail feathers.  She tolerated it for so long, but after the 5th or 6th time she decided that enough was enough.  So she stood up and slowly walked round Tu-Tu,  thrusting her head towards the little Pekin and glaring at her.  Then she went and settled down again -  exactly where she had been before!

This bit of action aroused the interest of some of the others, who wandered over to see what was going on.

Irene gets up close and personal, Fizz nestles down beside Tu-Tu

After a moment or two, Fizz decided to have a bath too.   But as usual, things don't turn out quite the way he intends them to.

Fizz has to do things the awkward way!

He ended up with his bum jammed against the tree and his face wedged up against the compost bags!   His antics caused Titian a great deal of concern, so she came over to check that he was all right.

Titian trying to work out what on earth Fizz is doing!

Watching chickens take dust baths is always lovely - but this time it was like going to a pantomime, it was so much fun to watch.   But it must have made Tu-Tu particularly tired this time because come bedtime, look where she chose to sleep:-

Tu-Tu nestles under Irene's wing