Baby birds and young chickens.

The baby barn swallows in the front porch nest have taken wing...... their first flight was this morning. I missed seeing them leave the nest for the first time, but I did see the three babies, along with the two adult birds, perched up along the woodwork underneath the eaves of the porch. It was windy today-- not exactly the best flying conditions for such tiny birds, but I guess they were okay. Barn swallows aren't very big birds to begin with, and the babies are quite small. Perfect prey for the hawks that fly around all day long, and I'm hoping the younger birds stay in the smaller trees and under the eaves till their wings are strong enough to carry them away from the talons of those hawks.

The eggs have hatched in the barn swallow nest on the back porch, and both adult birds take turns catching bugs and flying things to feed the babies. One adult bird goes off bug-hunting, and the other stays to guard the nest. When the hunter-bird comes back, the guard-bird flies off. They never seem to leave the nest untended for more than a couple of seconds. I was on the porch yesterday and one of the adult birds swooped down so close to me that I could hear the sounds of its wings. I guess I was too close to their nest. Don't they know by now that I'm not a threat to their just-hatched babies?

This afternoon, I went across the road to see our neighbors' chickens. They have 20 chickens, about nine weeks old now... red ones, black ones, black & whites, brown & whites. D still doesn't know how many are hens and how many are roosters, but the odds are that there will be more roosters than hens. Not a good thing. The roosters will bother the hens... all of the roosters will fight with one another.... and all of D's roosters will end up with yet another neighbor who will possibly keep one or two for his coop and then make fried chicken with the rest. Ouch.

As we watched D's chickens this afternoon, we saw them trying to establish a pecking order. Two chickens would stand beak to beak, so close that you couldn't fit a blade of grass between them-- and then the staring would begin. It was amazing to see... two chickens, eye to eye, without blinking, each one as stubborn as the next. Does the one who blinks first lose the match? D said that they started establishing the pecking order within days of being introduced to his coop. He cannot guess which hen

will be the Queen of the coop over there but he said the chickens will determine that within the next week or so.

I never would have thought that all of this drama could go on in the confines of a chicken coop. "As The Coop Turns?"

D told me the other day that I should be saving the seeds from the cantaloupes-- he says the chickens love them. He also suggested that I put out watermelon and cantaloupe rinds for the hens-- he said they will peck at the fruit and just leave the rinds. So of course when I went to the supermarket today, I made sure to get a couple of cantaloupes. When they're ripe, I will scoop out the "guts" (as D calls them) and bring them out to the hens.

As it is, the hens get a lot of left-over bits and pieces of food (excluding onions and garlic-- unless you want the eggs to smell like onions and garlic, which I don't). So far, my hens haven't refused anything at all, except for the hardest part of the broccoli stalks, no matter how finely I chopped them up. D told me that his chickens will only eat white bread-- not whole wheat, not rye. I told him about Scarlett eating only the center of the bread slices, but not the crust, and he thought that was very "southern" of her.

Just another day on the ranch...... standing in the hot breeze and comparing coops and chickens with the neighbors.