Chickens -1, Red Kite bonus

[antpitta]

Unfortunately I came across one of our 3 chickens legs-up in their paddock this morning. No obvious signs of having been attacked (we've previously lost most of our chickens on 2 separate occasions - first time to a fox, second to a stoat) so probably just one of those livestock events. I'd left the body at the time intending to go and remove it this evening but on the way noticed a Red Kite circling very low over the garden. Guessing that it had spotted the corpse I went and grabbed my camera and sure enough on returning the Kite flew up from the field (clearly it had seen me first!) but then spent a few minutes circling overhead before dropping into a nearby wood - no doubt waiting for me to exit before returning. Amongst the various failures I managed a few reasonable shots - hopefully enough of the chicken will survive the night so I can try for the Kite again (experience shows it will at least check out the site in the morning.

Taken with my regular set up: OM-1.1 with 150-400mm and 1.4x TC. ISO 3200 and limited PP (mainly cropping) using ON1.

[Ian]

Yeah, hens can expire unexpectedly for no apparent reason. We've also had the sneaky fox rampage 😥. The run we have now is pretty nuch impregnable to foxes. I think there are some gaps that would let a stoat in, so I do need to fix that! I'd have thought a chicken would be too much for a red kite to carry away, so dine on-site?

Ian

[antpitta]

We're well used to the sheep always looking for a new way to expire - probably not helped as our marshes are divided up/"fenced" by water so drowning is an occasional happening. We lost all our chickens (5 or 6) to a young fox about 20 years ago then all bar one to a stoat last year - losing more or less a hen a day until we identified the culprit using a trail camera! We set a humane trap baited with the remains of one of the dead chickens he hadn't made off with and caught him within hours. Although probably not the right thing to do we transported and released him in suitable habitat many miles away. Had it been a non-native species such as mink we would have legally been obliged to humanely destroy it - as has happened several times in recent years when trapping mink on our dyke system. Fortunately the current aggressive mink control project has almost completely removed mink from East Anglia with the process being extended outwards across England. We still run a single mink raft at the junction of 3 dykes as a monitor station but have not seen any evidence of mink for over 2 years. Fingers crossed it stays that way.

[Joe_T]

Great shots. I hope it returns in the morning so you can get more shots without having to sacrifice another chicken.