This and that

There can't be too many people who've been nagged by a wild pheasant, but it happened to me last week.

I was sitting in the garden with the chickens when I heard a soft muttering, which definitely wasn't coming from the chickens.   I looked up and there was Mrs Pheasant on my garden wall, glaring at me.

Our lovely neighbourhood female pheasant

She's usually around at mid-afternoon and if I'm out too, I drop a few handfuls of corn into the field for her.  When she sees me, she comes running over, knowing there's food to be had.   Evidently she wanted her afternoon tea now and what was I doing?  Chatting to chickens, that's what!

She graciously posed for No. 1 Son, while I sorted her food out.   She's a lovely bird and no photograph could possibly do justice to the subtle shading and patterns of her feathers. 

Moving on ......

A couple of weeks ago the floor of the spare coop fell down into the cage below.   Both Titian and Pom-Pom like to lay their eggs on the cage floor, so it was fortunate that neither of them were there when the floor nose-dived.

A couple of days later, I was having a headcount and realised Titian was missing.  I looked everywhere!  I went back and forth between the garden and the run, looking in places that even tinyTu-Tu couldn't have squeezed into.   I was beginning to get frantic when I had a brainwave.  I opened up the side door of the spare coop and there was Titian, comfortably settled in the nest box.  She gave me a look that clearly said, "Do you mind?  I could do with a little privacy here."   With no floor, all she'd had to do was hop up into this new inner sanctum - much more secluded than the cage below.  Evidently Rebecca has found this hidy hole too, because one of her eggs was in there today.

Pom-Pom, on the other hand, isn't bothered about privacy one little bit.   No. 1 Son had cut a hedge and piled the clippings in the garden to await being chopped up and put on the compost heap.   Pom-Pom spotted this neat heap of twigs and leaves, decided it would make a good nest, and started stomping around to flatten it down a bit.

Pom-Pom starts organising a nest suitable for a high-class hen like her

It mattered not one iota that the pile was large and she was small.  This is one determined little hen.  It took her a while, but eventually she had flattened a nice-sized area.   Then she looked around, decided there was something not quite right about it and laid her egg near the dustbath.

And finally we come to one of the Three Musketeers a.k.a. Fizz.   You'll need to remember what his headgear looks like - droopy these days, so here's a reminder:

He managed to get someone else's fluffy, downy white feather attached to his own hairdo.  It drooped elegantly down from near the top of his head at a decidedly rakish angle.   He reminded me so much of the impetuous, reckless young D'Artagnon.  It could only happen to him!