The Beak of Death...

[wafflycat]

...strikes again

I am so very glad Cathode is a small brown hen and not six feet tall. Her dinosaurian genes are well to the surface.

Last few times she's been free-ranging in the garden, she nabbed herself the odd shrew. Today I spotted her running round the garden with a garden bird chick firmly clamped in her beak. Obviously it was one that had fallen out of a nest. It wasn't alive for very long. Blech... Nature red in tooth beak and claw feather

 

[asterix]

My 88 yr old neighbour's chickens are completely ruthless and despite being free-range many look as hen-pecked as any battery bird.

 

[Cathryn]

I love that name for a hen. It's brilliant.

 

[fossyant]

So it's not the cats that are polishing off the local bird population then.....

 

[wafflycat]

Any chicken can look 'hen-pecked' for a couple of reasons:-
* If it's low down in the 'pecking order' it will be literally hen-pecked
* When going through a moult they are looking decidedly scruffy (being kind here!)

 

[Yellow Fang]

Shrew -> Cathode the hen -> egg -> Wafflycat

 

[wafflycat]

Yum, tasty protein!

 

[Maz]

My 88 yr old neighbour's chickens are completely ruthless...

Man, your neighbour's chickens are OLD. Do they still lay eggs?

 

[andy_wrx]

I take a malicious delight in tossing any snails I find in the veg patch to the chooks and watching in wonder as they smash their way in.

I guess I'd have no snails in the veg patch if I let the chooks into it, but then I'd have no veg patch either !

We had tadpoles in the pond a month or two ago and they used to wait on the edge of the pond until they could see one close enough and then snatch it out of the water like herons.

Worms, beetles, slugs, snails, nothing is safe.

It is rather frightening, I'd rather not meet one of those 10ft-tall carniverous birds the fossil-hunters have found.