Just call us "Cluck Med: Vacation Paradise for Poultry"

Just as mysteriously as she showed up, the chicken (aka "The Big Ging" or "Ginger") went away some time on Sunday while we were away all day visiting family not far away. She was wandering the garden all day on Saturday, but by Monday there was no trace of her in the garden. I haven't seen her since.

In total, the chicken stayed here for about 10 days eating lots of bugs, taking naps in the shade (even if it was only a few feet away from a cat), dusting herself in the dirt of the strawberry patch, and preening her feathers to make them look nice and glossy. She gained enough weight over that time period that she looked really healthy.

I could tell by Saturday that she was getting bored with the offerings here. Even though I put out chicken scratch (a mixture of cracked corn, wheat, oats and millet) for her everyday, she wasn't impressed and didn't like it. She would pick around the corn and leave the corn on the ground for other critters. I tried giving her shelled sunflower seeds. She liked them at first but then went back to foraging for bugs. By Saturday, she was wandering around the house to the front garden and foraging there. Apparently, she had gleaned all she could from the larger back garden.

The good news is that even though when she showed up she had diarrhea, after a few days here she was getting healthy and no longer having digestive problems. Once she started into marathon preening sessions while laying in the shade, I knew she was on her way to being a happier and healthier chicken.

She stayed here about as long as someone stays at a resort spa--relaxing and detoxing from real life. Maybe she was on vacation and we were her "resort spa".

Just call us "Cluck Med".

P.S. Despite my joviality in the above post, I'm sad she's moved on. I will admit I shed some tears yesterday when I didn't have a chicken to entertain me as I sat in my chaise lounge getting my outdoor R&R. I hope we get another "guest" soon.

♪♫ ... and a chicken in a peach tree ♪♫

Isn't that how the song goes? No? Well, it would if it was a summer song instead of a Christmas song.

Today marks one week since the mysterious feral chicken fell out of the blue into our front garden... quite literally. [Click here if you want to read about it]

I still don't know where she came from. But apparently, despite her disdain for humans and cats, she has decided to hang around. I think the neighbor's cat has finally given up trying to "get the chicken". And the once-feral garden kitty that lives in our garden is smaller than the chicken and avoids her at every opportunity. In fact, the chicken will run from me but not the cat. Go figure.

We've dubbed the chicken "Ginger" or "The Big Ging" (Doctor Who fans should know the reference). She's been cleaning up on bugs, seeds, grass, strawberry leaves, leftover watermelon and chicken scratch (a mix of corn, wheat, millet and oats) so her feathers are in much better condition than only a week ago. She appears to have put on some weight too--which is good because she was so scrawny. So the "Big Ging" is getting bigger, thank goodness. I've also caught peeks of her when she doesn't know I'm looking and seen fluffy down in large tufts coming in around her legs. I think this is a good sign.

Speaking of catching peeks... can you see her peering at me with one eye from behind the peach tree leaves in the photo below?

I was wondering where she was spending her nights until yesterday when I stayed out in my chaise lounge until dusk. She meandered around pecking at things on the flagstones under the plum tree until she decided it was time to go to bed. She looked both ways a few times as if to see if anyone was looking, then crouched down low and sprang up in the most graceful chicken move I've ever seen. Flying up to the top of the wooden fence that divides our property from our neighbors' yard, she landed on the dog-ear-cut edge of the fence boards in a clearing between a rosebush and a liquid amber tree. She looked around a few more times, then carefully walked along the ridge of the boards and stealthily ducked under the branches of the liquid amber. I saw some rustling as she made her way through the branches and hopped up into the branches of the neighbor's peach tree that is right up against the fence with its boughs hanging over into our garden. When the rustling finally settled, I ventured around for a better vantage point without startling her and found she had roosted in a crook left in the branches from the neighbor's latest pruning.

This evening, I was again sitting outside at dusk (one of my favorite pastimes) when she fluttered up to the fence again to go to bed. Hubby joined midway through and got to watch the last half of her roosting ritual.

After she appeared to be settled, I ducked inside to get my camera and telephoto lens. I captured a few shots of her from the other side of the pond. When I came inside, I discovered the above photo with her little eye peering at me from between the peach tree leaves.

She's very suspicious of everything--particularly me and my camera.

Vignettes from an afternoon at the bird fountain

If I sit quietly in my chaise under the shade of the oleander with my camera and telephoto lens at the ready, I sometimes get the choice privilege of witnessing the dance around the bird fountain. The finches are visitors at this time of year. And one particular finch family is frequenting the fountain today.

First, Papa Finch comes down to get a drink and also to check out the current safety of the fountain to see if it's okay for the rest of the family to come down too.

Then Mama Finch swoops in gracefully, looking much like a ski jumper in flight.

Mama Finch is then joined by the young fledgling. Mama is teaching her juvenile how to drink but still has to help out sometimes by giving the fledging water directly. It will learn to do this on its own with Mama and Papa's great coaching.

The fledgling looks puzzled when Mama or Papa flies away. It is a tactic to try to get the young one to discover drinking directly from the fountain on its own.

The finches don't own exclusive rights to the water fountain, so they have to know when to share. When a female Anna's hummingbird approaches, the finch gets one last drink and then acquiesces to let the hummingbird take a turn.

This female Anna's is a little more cautious in approaching the fountain than other hummingbirds. She may be young or she may simply be out of her territory (hummingbirds are highly territorial and will chase off interlopers as soon as they are discovered).

She flits and darts as if she's trying to view the gurgling water from every possible angle before imbibing. She is probably feeling little droplets of water as they splash off the fountain. You can see some in the photo below.

The hummingbird is sure she wants to get a drink now and sticks out her long little tongue in anticipation of sipping from the burbling water.

She darts in and back out over and over with her tongue out catching little sips every time she goes close to the water.

After a few drinks, the hummingbird decides she has time to take a bath too.

She sits her tiny little body right in the middle of the action and drenches herself. Over the next minute or more, she is often completely enveloped in the water. Clearly, she loves baths. She's happy, content, and, eventually, very clean.

Now...

Not too far away from the bird fountain amidst the tall-ish grasses growing at the edges of the flagstone and gravels paths that meander through the garden, the visiting feral chicken (who showed up last week) is playing "jungle fowl" and hiding from me as she usually does. But my telephoto lens catches a glimpse of her anyway from across the pond that stands between the two of us. She's not a fan of humans or cameras. So I feel extremely lucky to have gotten another shot of her.

Is someone missing their contraband chicken?

I was sitting in the living room late yesterday afternoon talking to my sister-in-law on the phone, when I saw a large dark object fly past the front window in a cackling blur. At first, I thought another wild turkey had shown up and had crash landed in the front garden.

With phone in hand, I went outside to investigate. I heard clucking from under the rosemary hedge where it is too small to fit a turkey. Then it dawned on me that the clucking was not a turkey... it was a chicken!

That was a surprise! It is against county zoning ordinance laws to keep chickens where we live (we've talked directly with the county about it hoping we could have our own backyard chicken. No dice.). So we've never seen a stray chicken wandering around before.

The chicken hung around until dusk--wandering between the back and front gardens clucking along the side yard that connects both. The living room windows that overlook the side yard were open so we could enjoy the cool May night air. We could hear her clucking as she repeatedly passed underneath. The cats were quite entertained. The clucking finally stopped right before sundown, so I figured she had wandered home to wherever she came from to roost.

I was wrong...

Today, I came downstairs to hear more clucking and ba-gawking out in the back garden. I didn't get a chance to get a photo of her yesterday, so I went and got my camera and headed out the back door to see if I could get a shot or two of her.

Well, just as I stepped out onto the deck and started to round the corner of the house, I witnessed one of the neighborhood cats lunging at the chicken at the base of the deck stairs. Said chicken promptly took flight and headed straight for my head! Luckily, she veered at the last minute and landed a few feet in front of me on the deck railing next to the hot tub.

Always striving to be the consummate photographer, I remained unruffled and started squeezing off shots of the chicken while I had the chance. She was in perfect view with great light. How could I not?

She continued to cluck and ba-gawk at me. It wasn't happy ba-gawking either. She was royally ticked off at the audacity of that cat (who is barely bigger than the chicken) and the nerve of this woman to take pictures of her with her feathers ruffled.

You know the old adage, "Madder than a wet hen"? Well, I think I caught the look that goes along with that saying...

Talk about giving someone the "skunk eye". Boy, if looks could kill!

Fortunately, our garden is a backyard wildlife habitat full of plenty of water and bugs for her to eat while she hangs around. Now if she could only poop in the dirt and fertilize it instead of pooping on the flagstones that don't need fertilizer. Beggars can't be choosers I suppose.

Because of the county ordinances prohibiting the keeping of chickens, I can't really go up and down the the street with leaflets saying "FOUND: One lost chicken who's extremely ticked off right now"-- although I'm really tempted. Oh, you have no idea how tempted I am.

CHICKEN UPDATE (May 25th)
The chicken is still here. It wandered down the street for a while yesterday, but it came back again *sigh*. It disappears at a little before sundown somewhere in the bushes. I don't know how it's surviving every night since we have many predators here (raccoons, skunks, opossums and grey foxes). 

I decided to try and figure out what kind of chicken it is. I found only one breed on www.BackYardChickens.com that evenly remotely looks like it--the Euskal Oiloa: Marraduna Basque. Apparently, this breed loves free ranging (ya' think?). It is considered a rare Spanish breed. Of course something like this would show up here instead of a regular run-of-the-mill chicken. If anyone knows more about this breed, please tell me if I'm off base in concluding this is what it is. I don't have any new photos of the chicken because it's camera shy. It does look more healthy just since these photos were taken. It must be finding some really good eats here.

One hen has now become a flock (of sorts)

A while back I designed an egg carton label to put on a carton I was returning to a friend that generously gave us some eggs from her backyard hens (click here to see the post where I wrote about it).

My original hen illustration on the labels looked like this

Well, last week a very nice lady emailed me to ask if I did bulk quantities of personalized egg carton labels. She wanted to keep the cost low so she could sell the eggs from her own backyard hens for a reasonable price and not have to fold in the cost of an expensive label. Since my online printer only does a more expensive label, I told her that a great option would be for me to design and lay out the labels to print 3 on an 8.5"x11" sheet and make a ready-to-print pdf file available for her to purchase and download (at www.RosehavenCottageDownloads.com). Once she purchased and downloaded the file, she could take it and have the labels printed at her local copying center onto non-scored adhesive-backed label stock and then cut the labels herself. She found out she was able to get the label stock inexpensively by ordering online and only pay for the printing. She loved the idea.

Once she sent me a photo of her hens that are a variety of colors, I wanted to make the labels even more special . My original hen looked a lot like one of her hens, but her other hens looked so beautifully different. So I went about creating two more hens using the photo as inspiration for coloring. That way each sheet of labels will have 3 labels on it, each with a different colored hen.

Here's the first color variation I did

The photo of my client's hen flock was so good I could see all the nuances of colors in their feathers. I set about trying to capture it while keeping the renderings illustrative and simple at the same time. I think I pulled it off pretty well.

The second variation I did was based on a gorgeous hen with iridescent feathers

In the end, my client loved the final product and will soon have personalized egg cartons full of eggs. It makes me happy just thinking about it.

Personalized egg carton labels for great homegrown eggs

A couple of weeks ago, a very good friends of ours dropped by with a carton of homegrown eggs from their backyard hens. My friend chose the breeds of her hens so there would be a variety of egg colors--pale blue, pale pink and tan. We got to enjoy all three colors in one carton. One of the eggs was unusually large and when we cracked it open we were delighted to find it had a double yolk!

The carton the eggs had been transported in from their house to ours was a simple clear plastic egg carton from the store with the commercial label taken off. I thought it would be fun to design a label for the carton so we could return it to them with a very special touch.

Once I did and they had the carton back, I thought, "Wouldn't it be cool if anyone with backyard chickens could make their own personalized egg carton labels?" I started ruminating on the idea to come up with a solution.

It turns out the solution was easier than I thought. The online printer I use for all my personalized stationery designs (zazzle) can print customizable bumper stickers that are the perfect size (3"x11")! What's even cooler is the stickers they produce are printed on vinyl and are fade- and water-resistant! Sweet!

So I set to work getting the design I had made for our friends set up for print-on-demand at Rosehaven Cottage Stationers. I set it up so the labels can be personalized easily in the text and font of the customer's choosing.

Now I'm wondering what other color combinations and designs backyard chicken wranglers would like to see. And what other versions of the little hen should I make and in what colors? What do you think? I'd love some suggestions to get the creative juices flowing.

P.S. Because of county ordinances we can't have our own backyard chickens so I have to live vicariously through all of my fortunate local and blogging friends that do have them. I LOVE when you share photos and stories!!!