Outdoor Times

Another week has been lived out!  We spent many days outdoors, the weather finally cooperating.  Although you can see that Owl has is winter coat on still (above).  It was an evening of play and it was only in the forties, damp and cold.  The littles had much fun blowing bubbles together and the older two had fun with playing Badminton.  (I admit I had to look up the spelling for that)  We have had so much fun playing with the new Badminton rackets and even put up the net one day. (thanks Grandma J)

 We've spent many evenings outside trying to get a little more work done in the garden and watching over our hens.  Last week J spent much time and muscle on moving the chicken fence so the birds could have fresh pasture.  There is a lot of rock under the soil and it was hard work getting all the posts in.  Then the very next day, a Cooper's hawk attacked the hens.  It happened just as we were coming outside to play!  Badger was the first one out and yelled to scare it away but it didn't seem to care.  Thankfully, I had let Millie out to run for a bit so when she arrived on the scene the hawk flew up to a nearby tree.  The bird was wounded, missing lots of feathers and had a gash on her neck.  Poor thing.  We were quite shook up by it and kept watch all that day.  The hawk came back several times to try again, but the frightened hens wouldn't come out of their coop.  Smart birds.

 The hawk tried again a few days later, but I think it has learned that it can't actually carry a bird off as tasty as the idea might seem.  The second bird was injured too, but they are both mending nicely.  The up side to this whole thing is that the hawk has nested on the edge of the woods.  The nest is plainly visible to us from our yard and it's been really cool being able to watch him.

 The picture doesn't do the bird justice.  The nest is quite large.  And yes, we think there is a nested pair as we've seen two at a time.  There is also a sharp shinned hawk in the area too.  Same color pattern, smaller size.  We've gotten quite good at identifying them now and the boys can even identify several of its calls.  Isn't learning at home cool?

 Here he is just leaving the nest!

The warm weather has settled in (crossing my fingers) and we had a watermelon this weekend to celebrate!  The garden has seedlings popping up everywhere!  And there are 30 chicks brooding in the chick house!  God is good.  And spring is here!