NEIGHBORHOOD CHICKENS AND BABY SCRUB JAYS

Our car is out of commission so we didn't make it out to our regular Sit Spot Sunday, but we had a lovely neighborhood walk to the Chicken Farm. I'm only bummed we didn't make it out to the river because this would have been our fourth weekend in a row collecting St. John's Wort and we've got a system now!

The chicken farm is a tiny urban lot a couple of blocks from our house. It's really too small to be wonderfully buildable and apparently the owner is absentee. It's been a dumping ground; now a neighbor has turned it into a chicken farm and garden!

They have a way to drop your compost through a shoot in the fence and the chickens come and gobble it up. They have let Kiddo go into the coop and collect a dozen eggs straight from the nests to bring home and eat!

The best part about today's trip was that we saw a family of scrub jays! We have seen scrub jays parents around on previous trips and I thought there might be a nest near by. The chickens are very attentive to bird language.

Today there were two scrub jays on top of the coop: a parent and a very newly fledged little one. The parent swooped down into the chicken area a couple times and was run off quickly by chickens. The little one stayed on top and called for food and also did this cute little arched wings thing.

A few minutes later two more baby scrub jays were on top of the coop too. They pretty quickly hopped back up into the oak tree over the coop but the original one stayed put. It seemed like he was just trying to learn to fly perhaps.