Predator

We had a new visitor this week. I was working at my computer but I decided to look out our front window to see what was going on around our house. Maybe I was alerted by an angry chipmunk warning the forest or perhaps by the sudden stillness that often accompanies strangers to our forest. I saw 3 cats about 20 yards in front of the house. Although we do see a domestic cat (or maybe a feral cat) once in a while, it is quite unusual to see several cats. I got the camera because I suspected that I was seeing a mother bobcat with 2 kittens. I quickly took a couple of pictures, but only one kitten was visible from the window, so I went downstairs and quietly opened the front door to see if I could take any more pictures. The kitten I had seen upstairs was sitting on a pile of construction material looking right at me. I snapped several pictures over a minute or two as the kitten posed for me, apparently fearless. Finally it got bored or Mother called and it melted back into the forest.
Notice the white around its eyes and the three points above and between the eyes. The back of its ears are striped black-white-black. The white outlines of its eyes, the little points between the eyes and the striped ears are all distinctive of the bobcat. Catching a bobcat on film was a real thrill.

Tragedy in the coop

I came home midday to refuel and repack before leaving for the weekend in Philadelphia. The girls were nowhere to be seen. They didn't come running when I called. I thought they'd been hijacked by a turkey flock. The Baron went looking for them up and down the trail. After I left he discovered them under the buddeleia, roosting or resting, but very well hidden. Usually they are sort of under the bush but I can see them. A bit strange to be so quiet, I thought.
The Baron went out just before dusk to close them up for the night; as he approached the tractor, no chicks were to be seen, but he heard an owl hooting very close by. Very strange, he thought, to hear an owl so close and so early in the evening. When he was close, the chickens hurried out of their hiding places under the tall grasses and scurried into the pen. No dilly-dallying tonight. More strange behavior, so he decided to check to see that all were accounted for. He retrieved his spotting lantern and scouted around the chicken tractor: one dead body, already cold. She was intact, but probably had a broken neck. There was no sign of the predator. He saved some feathers but put the carcass at the Bait Shoppe with the game camera focused. How disturbing to think something just killed our chicken and didn't eat it.
Now the fun seems to have gone out of the girls. They still burst out of the tractor in the morning, but they head quickly for the cover of a bush. They seem to trust the turkey flock so they join those boys in the open but head back to cover when they move on. Something is still awry and unbalanced in the forest.