{"id":2497,"date":"2011-01-10T14:06:35","date_gmt":"2011-01-10T19:06:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=2497"},"modified":"2011-01-10T14:06:35","modified_gmt":"2011-01-10T19:06:35","slug":"hawk-0-chastity-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=2497","title":{"rendered":"Hawk 0, Chastity 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nChastity, the day after the second hawk attack. Her eye is OK, but she’s squinting from the hawk-peck wound just below her right eye.<\/em><\/p>\n

The hawk came back.<\/p>\n

Once again, it went for Chastity. Ken found her lying on the ground beside the chicken house, in a state of shock. He picked her up and put her inside. There was some sign of injury to one of her wings, but no blood. And there was a hawk-peck wound just under her right eye that caused her eye to swell shut. A day later, she was squinting, and we could see that her eye was OK. Today, two days later, her eye is almost back to normal except for the scab underneath it.<\/p>\n

Chastity seems depressed, but she’ll make a full recovery.<\/p>\n

Now what will we do. Clearly the hawk is not going to give up on trying to eat the chickens. Besides, hawks waste chickens. I understand that they eat the brain and lungs and leave the rest. Even worse, Ken has seen evidence that the hawk has built a nest at the edge of the woods right below the abbey. I would have assumed this to be a squirrel’s nest, but would a hawk enter and settle down into a squirrels nest, as Ken saw it do? I doubt it.<\/p>\n

For now, we’re letting the chickens out only when we’re there to shepherd them, while we try to figure out what to do. We could put up a scarecrow and a fake owl, but I doubt that would be very effective. Some people report success stringing fishing line above the chicken lot, but I’m not sure that’s practical here. The fence is large (almost 400 feet). Though the fence is 8 feet high, I doubt we could string fishing line in such a way that it wouldn’t sag and strangle us as we worked in the garden. I’m looking for new ideas for defenses and trying to figure out what’s practical.<\/p>\n

I’m pretty sure that it’s illegal under state and\/or federal law to kill a hawk. That’s out of the question.<\/p>\n

In so many ways, it’s exciting to live in a place with so much wildlife. But I never guessed that it would be such a struggle to defend the chickens and the garden. Between the deer, the groundhogs, the hawk, the fox, and the voles, everything wants to move in and eat us out of house and home.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nThe hawk at the edge of the woods, only 35 yards from the abbey. Photos by Ken Ilgunas.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nHawk nest or squirrel’s nest? Ken saw the hawk actually enter and settle into the nest.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chastity, the day after the second hawk attack. Her eye is OK, but she’s squinting from the hawk-peck wound just below her right eye. The hawk came back. Once again, it went for Chastity. Ken found her lying on the ground beside the chicken house, in a state of shock. He picked her up and … Continue reading “Hawk 0, Chastity 2”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sustainable-living","category-the-land"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2497\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}