But since you don’t have runs around or in front of the coops I really don’t know what you could do about this. Maybe accept they are free rangers to the max?
Acceptance may be all I can do, when it occurs. Some nights they choose to roost in coops - tonight Q is out but A is in, for example - and I think they may give it up when they start laying. At the mo I think they're getting bullied on the roosts by those hens lowest in the adult hierarchy, and it might stop if/when these pullets start standing their ground and/or peck back.
On the other hand, Q is Rhondda's daughter, and R was the one who had a hidden nest last year (R has been laying in the coops since it was predated, and she has always roosted in coop), so the feral instinct may run in Q's genes. But A's mum was Idris, who never did this. I still hope it's a temporary blip, and that they will grow out of it.
The nightly predators I know of are: foxes, and members of the weasels/polecat/marten family
Same here; a fox took my first 3 chickens, and foxes take some of a neighbour's chickens every year (they aren't ranging dawn-dusk, are production breeds and are replaced when laying falls off, and there are no roos in the flock, so there are lots of differences in keeping conditions, in essentially the same habitat). Foxes are definitely about, but they can't get into the Nestera coops, and they can't climb the holm oak, certainly not to the height the girls are now going.
I have seen a weasel in the garden, though it was many years ago, before I kept chickens. There are also apparently mink in the marsh two miles away; I hope they never find us. There are plenty of waterfowl down there for them anyway.
Not sure about owls or other nightly birds of prey. The smaller owls we have hunt mainly for mice and rats
We have owls but I don't think they would attempt to take a mature chicken. Voles and shrews are their normal prey.
There really aren't many other opportunities to study other species social behaviour at such close quarters.
