{"id":5256,"date":"2013-03-02T17:21:29","date_gmt":"2013-03-02T22:21:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=5256"},"modified":"2013-03-02T17:21:29","modified_gmt":"2013-03-02T22:21:29","slug":"hawk-attack-and-the-girls-are-safe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=5256","title":{"rendered":"Hawk attack, and the girls are safe"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nThere actually are two chickens in this photo. Helen is tucked in behind Josephine. You can see a bit of Helen’s comb near the top of the photo.<\/em><\/p>\n

It has been well over a year, maybe almost two years, since there has been a hawk attack at the abbey. We had a hawk attack today, and, thanks to the cat, I scared the hawk away before any chickens got hurt.<\/p>\n

I was lying on the bed reading. Lily was with me, snoozing under a blanket. It is possible that I heard chicken sounds, but I don’t have a clear recollection of that. It was Lily who alerted me that something was up. She jumped out from under the blanket with a look of alarm and let me know, by the direction she was looking, that something was going on up the hill where the chickens are. I dashed out in my sock feet and scared off a hawk. It was a big hawk, with a wingspan of three and a half to four feet. When it saw me, it took off from the ground near the chicken house. It flew through the overhead fishing line that acts as a hawk deterrent and and flew to the edge of the woods. It perched on a limb. While I was looking for a rock to throw at it, it flew off.<\/p>\n

The girls had hidden themselves pretty well, especially Josephine, who I couldn’t find at first. Fanny and Fiona were hunkered in a corner near the asparagus patch. Josephine was well hidden in some thick grass above the chicken house. Though Helen later joined Josephine in the grass, when I first saw Helen she was on the ground near the chicken house. It’s possible that Helen tried to engage the hawk. She is the biggest and bravest of the four chickens.<\/p>\n

When chickens see aerial predators, their instincts kick in, and they’re good instincts: Engage and defend yourself if you have no choice, otherwise hide quickly, keep your tail feathers and head down, and don’t squawk.<\/p>\n

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\nFanny and Fiona, hunkered down beside the asparagus bed. Notice how their tail feathers are lowered. They were farther away from the scene than Helen and Josephine.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There actually are two chickens in this photo. Helen is tucked in behind Josephine. You can see a bit of Helen’s comb near the top of the photo. It has been well over a year, maybe almost two years, since there has been a hawk attack at the abbey. We had a hawk attack today, … Continue reading “Hawk attack, and the girls are safe”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-land"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5256","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=5256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5256\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}