Yesterday my partner calls me at work to let me know about his crazy chicken morning before he left the house. Most mornings I wake up early, let the birds out of their covered pens and then head out the door by 7:30, so the birds can free range for a few hours before he leaves for work. At that time they're all the put back in their separate runs.
So I get a call saying at first the Orpingtons, all 7 of them mind you, were nowhere to be found but he could hear them out back somewhere. Typically they stay by the house in the backyard, last week we put up raised beds so they've been picking and scratching in them. Well, now I'm worried and I'm like, "GO find them!"
He follows the noise to the front of out property, where the creek bends away from the house and someone planted a good sized stand of bamboo years ago. It's grown up and about 8ft tall now. As he walks towards it he sees Neville hunkered down, with his hackles raised, he walked a few feet more before he realized why. In the grass in front of him, about 10 feet away was a hawk! There was only about two feet of distance between it and Neville and he said this hawk which literally was no more than 8 inches tall had it's wings spread and was hissing and
sparring with Neville!
Behind Neville, hiding in the bamboo were all 6 of my girls, carrying on and making a noise as if something wasn't about to kill them. But Neville, my big baby rooster was protecting them! He kept coming at the hawk, crowing and lunging towards it. He was not backing down one bit. When the hawk noticed my partner it immediately shot straight up in the air and took off, only to then be chased by the crows that we've got living in the big trees in our property. He said he watched the crows chase and dive at the hawk until they were almost to small to see in the sky.
He said then Neville called the girls out of the bamboo and walked over to him, looked up at him and started making rooster noises, as if he was trying to say, "I did good? I kept that hawk away from the girls?" LOL!
Neville was completely unharmed and all of my pullets were okay. This morning I checked on everyone to make sure there were no signs of shock or trauma, they're all completely fine. Nevill got extra tomato treats today.
I thought it was amazing that Neville would be so brave as to stand up to a hawk! Granted, it was a small hawk but still, Neville was NOT giving his girls to that thing. I honestly don't know what the dumb little hawk was thinking, how could it even attack one of the Orpingtons? They're HUGE! Like 10 times the size of this puny bird. I hope that the crows gave it a good chase and we won't see it again.
