Two weeks ago a red tailed hawk tried to grab one of my full grown Red Stars. She managed to squeeze behind the wood pile and all the hawk got was feathers. The hawk only flew off when my son happened to go out to play and scared it off. He saw the chicken make a break for it and hide under our side steps. Poor Henrietta looks like a Turken now, but her feathers are coming back in slowly. The hawk did not give up, even after I locked all the birds into their coop. I saw it sitting in the nextdoor neighbors' tree for a while. It flew down into the woods behind the coop and stuck around for hours. The birds have been kept locked up when we're not outside since that day. They're not happy. But I'm glad I decided to do that because today, more than two weeks later, I watched a hawk swoop down from a tree across the street into the maple in my front yard. It's HUGE! I'm sure it's just waiting for me to let down my guard. This is the first time we've had hawk trouble in the more than 10 years we've had chickens. I have to wonder why. This is the first year we've had a rooster. This is the first time we've had ducks. And this is the first year I've had light colored birds. We also have more birds than we've ever had before. Either visually or audibly, we're more noticeable than we were.
