Last night I let my chickens out when I came home from work. They all happily came out to eat the scratch I had set out for them. I went into the garage to get crumbles to fill their feeder and heard them sounding the predator alarm. My first thought was "not again". We had lost three this past winter to hawk attacks. When I came out of the garage running I could see all the hens hiding under their coop and my two roosters sounding the alarm and walking between the hawk and the hens. As I walked closer the hawk flew away and I could see feathers spread over where the hawk had been. I walked over the area expecting to find that one of my hens had fallen victim to the attack but instead found a pair of black bird feet and dark brown feathers. My flock is all Delawares so I was relieved that it was not one of my birds. I also went and did a head count once they all went in to roost for the night and discovered I had one more than yesterday. My only thought is that the extra bird is coming back home since fleeing the last hawk attack we had three weeks ago. My next thought was that it could be one of the pair of partridge that I see daily picking up the scraps my birds leave on the grass but I have since seen both this morning. I have attached two images to this post in hopes someone might be able to identify what type of bird was the latest victim to the hawk.
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