Some excitement with the chickens this week.

One of the chickens, Lola, was still outside when the pop door was closing:

You may remember me describing her as the introverted chicken. She often hangs back, and on this occasion hung back too long, and got stuck outside.

I noticed her perching on the waterer when I checked the cams after I got in bed, so I got dressed again, put on a head-mounted light, and went out there to take her inside:

Here’s me picking her up. I carried her out of the run and into the coop:

Another bit of excitement was that I opened the gate to the veggie garden, enabling the new girls to access that:

I also opened the hole in the fence between the two runs, so the old and new chickens can now mingle:

They are still laying eggs and roosting for the night in their own coops, though eventually I expect some will swap coops. Chickens are very slow to change.

A bunch of pictures of the chickens all together:

Let’s take a look at the ducks, too:

But we’re not done with the chickens: a few days later, Lola did it again, outside when the door was closing:

Actually it turned out that there were three chickens outside this time:

I realized that the pop door controller was closing the door too early, before it was dark, due to low hanging branches of the tree by the coop shading the light sensor. So I trimmed some branches:

The tree fought back, whacking me in the face; fortunately only lightly bruising me:

As usual, I left the cut branches in the run for the chickens to play with:

So far the chickens haven’t been caught outside again.  I have a daily reminder to check as it gets dark, just in case.

Misty pond, with the ducks heading into the house for dinner:

Finally, some shots of the hungry hummingbirds on the feeders: