Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

The boxes from the house clearance arrived this evening. I'm going to need another bookshelf.
This lot was in one of the boxes and the stranded cufflinks are rather unusual. One doesn't see men wearing cufflinks much these days, or maybe I'm just mixing in the wrong circles.:p
The silver tie pin is rather nice as well.
View attachment 4016874
Nice!
And no, I can't find any takers for my Dad's cufflinks. They are way too nice to go in the bin, but nobody I know wears them either.
 
Where I live in Australia, the nighttime predators are foxes. During the daytime, an eagle or hawk will try their luck.
Our turkeys are great for addressing hawks. We have a young hawk that has been around for 3-4, he landed on the fence post and the turkeys went after him. They also are an amazing alarm system.

The Egg Thief has been killing rats and tossing them out by the edge of pond for the hawk, so he is well fed and totally uninterested in the chickens.
 
One of my Christmas presents was The Nature of Oaks, by Doug Tallamy. I'm a fan of his approach to promoting native plants and even dragged DH to one of his lectures a while back.

Anywho, the book covers the activity around oak trees month by month, and the "March" chapter opens with a discussion of what your macro lens might pick up, @Perris.

View attachment 4017562
View attachment 4017563
that looks like a wonderful book - thanks for alerting me to its existence. I see hunting for detritivores in my future!

There are several oaks on the boundaries here that are hundreds of years old, as well as the holm oak I planted soon after we moved in. I'm also a big fan of gardening with native species, while recognizing that plants and animals move and naturalize different areas, especially now with climate change and other environmental challenges, so that what thrives in a place changes over time. For example, the holm oak is naturalised not native, so too the London plane (which is one of my favourite trees), so too the larch, sycamore, horse chestnut and many others that people might assume are natives but actually are naturalised (taking the flooding of Doggerland that turned GB into an island as the cut-off point). Meanwhile two genuine natives have been almost wiped out in my lifetime by disease: ash die-back and Dutch elm disease. Resistant varieties are growing in hedges, but meanwhile the gaps they leave make space for other species. Diversity is ideal for most species, and evolution never stops.
 
On the other hand, Q is Rhondda's daughter,
I think a mother hen really doesn’t care anymore about her daughters/sons, most of the time. I had problems at roost time too when the juveniles wanted to roost with the flock. The adults didn’t except the juveniles in their roost area repeatedly. I didn’t want run sleepers, so this was the reason to add the playhouse coop.


We have owls but I don't think they would attempt to take a mature chicken. Voles and shrews are their normal prey.
Fyi: There are several species of mice in the Netherlands, like in England. They all have the word muis (mouse) in their names.
Huismuis, Woelmuis, Dwergmuis, Bosmuis, Slaapmuizen, Veldmuis en Spitsmuis. This makes it much easier to talk about mice. ;)

Translate makes : House Mouse, Vole, Harvest Mouse, Wood Mouse, Dormouse, Field Mouse and Shrew. Completely different words like vole and shrew, and words that cant be translated to a single synonym (woel) makes its rather complicated to grasp/learn foreign languages. 😕

Translating only the first parts of their names makes: House, Tossing and turning, Dwarf, Forest, Sleep, Field and Spire.
 
I think a mother hen really doesn’t care anymore about her daughters/sons, most of the time
that's my impression too. I highlighted the relationship for the possible feral genetic tendency rather than their inter-personal (? inter-chickenal?) behaviour.

Completely different words like vole and shrew, and words that cant be translated to a single synonym (woel) makes its rather complicated to grasp/learn foreign languages.
English has quite a lot of these, largely because of two very different language traditions, Anglo-Saxon and French-Latin. Most words for ordinary everyday things come from Old English, while most abstract or theoretical words come from French/Latin, which were superimposed by conquest from 1066, but only onto things that mattered to the conquerors. By and large that didn't include animals - except when being served as food. Hence 'beef' from Fr. boeuf but 'cow' from OE cu.
 
I think a mother hen really doesn’t care anymore about her daughters/sons, most of the time. I had problems at roost time too when the juveniles wanted to roost with the flock. The adults didn’t except the juveniles in their roost area repeatedly. I didn’t want run sleepers, so this was the reason to add the playhouse coop.



Fyi: There are several species of mice in the Netherlands, like in England. They all have the word muis (mouse) in their names.
Huismuis, Woelmuis, Dwergmuis, Bosmuis, Slaapmuizen, Veldmuis en Spitsmuis. This makes it much easier to talk about mice. ;)

Translate makes : House Mouse, Vole, Harvest Mouse, Wood Mouse, Dormouse, Field Mouse and Shrew. Completely different words like vole and shrew, and words that cant be translated to a single synonym (woel) makes its rather complicated to grasp/learn foreign languages. 😕

Translating only the first parts of their names makes: House, Tossing and turning, Dwarf, Forest, Sleep, Field and Spire.
Wow that is confusing 😦

No wonder Latin scientific names are preferred in research.

Here a shrew is not a rodent, although same size as a house mouse. It eats mice and I welcome them in my house.

Several types of voles, they are bad for my garden.
 
Wow that is confusing 😦

No wonder Latin scientific names are preferred in research.

Here a shrew is not a rodent, although same size as a house mouse. It eats mice and I welcome them in my house.

Several types of voles, they are bad for my garden.
your post prompted me to look up 'shrew' on wikipedia, and it opens up even more levels of confusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrew
"True shrews are not to be confused with treeshrews, otter shrews, elephant shrews, West Indies shrews, or marsupial shrews, which belong to different families or orders". Plus, and I assume this is the sort you welcome in as mouse-killers, "the contents of the venom glands of the American short-tailed shrew are sufficient to kill 200 mice by intravenous injection." :eek:
 
that's my impression too. I highlighted the relationship for the possible feral genetic tendency rather than their inter-personal (? inter-chickenal?) behaviour.


English has quite a lot of these, largely because of two very different language traditions, Anglo-Saxon and French-Latin. Most words for ordinary everyday things come from Old English, while most abstract or theoretical words come from French/Latin, which were superimposed by conquest from 1066, but only onto things that mattered to the conquerors. By and large that didn't include animals - except when being served as food. Hence 'beef' from Fr. boeuf but 'cow' from OE cu.
I recommend "The Story of English", either the book or television series from the 1980s. Fascinating stuff explaining why English is so difficult to learn.
 
I recommend "The Story of English", either the book or television series from the 1980s. Fascinating stuff explaining why English is so difficult to learn.
I can't find that - who is the author. Nearest I found was Melvyn Bragg 'The Adventure of English'. Is that it?
Sounds like something I might enjoy (though I am not a Melvyn Bragg fan really).
 

New posts New threads Active threads

Back
Top Bottom