The other morning we ran outside to the awful fracas of chickens making horribly loud noises in our front flowerbed. From the door I saw a huge dark hawk rising up and over the driveway toward the west. I recognized it as one I'd seen earlier in the summer, when it had made a swooping tight U turn attack out of the west right into a tall dense evergreen shrub where I knew sparrows were nesting. Sheesh.
This time it didn't look like there was anything in its talons.....but it was hard to tell, it was all so fleeting. As I ran out to the bed, searching, the only bird I could see was Percy, my Mille Fleur OEG Bantam roo, standing all alone in a small clearing under the birch tree, stock still except for his head....searching vigilantly.
There was no one else, and no feathers anywhere.....except some frightened birds standing over near the henhouse. While my son and I were rounding everyone up for the day, every once in a while some bantees would come racing across the grass in 1's, 2's or 3's to be locked up. So scared. Eventually all were accounted for... except one of Percy's two girls.
Later that day, on the way to Wynette's to pick up a couple of hens, we noticed a huge swipe of blood across the side of my van that had been parked next to where we had found Percy standing. So I sadly wrote her off as gone.
Late the next day.....our Min Australian Shepherd flushed her out of the flowerbed! My inventory so far has shown no one missing!
All I can say is it had to have been hawk blood, on account of my little bitty Percy, fierce protector of his girls. Look how small he is next to that brick.
He shall from now on be addressed as Sir Percy, Avenger.
bethanyrae
