Don’t you imagine it must be nice to keep a few chickens in your back yard? Crowing at dawn and to announce visitors? I know having chickens is no big deal for some of you living in more rural areas, but for most people living in my part of NJ, it’s something of a novelty nowadays. Growing up I didn’t know anyone who had chickens and I still don’t have any neighbors with a coop in the yard. The closest thing to outdoor farm animals in my area are hutch bunnies. ;-(

So when my oldest brother Kevin moved to the country (or what passes for *country* in these parts) and joked about it, we got him a baker’s dozen of baby chicks for Easter one year. I don’t think he’s forgiven me yet.

Giving animals as gifts is never a good idea. Giving chickens is really, really silly.

It’s been seven or eight years since that first batch of chickens and Kevin and his wife have recently built a fancy new coop to house their growing population, so I guess they must have found something to enjoy about them. There have been quite a few problems with predators though, as those of you with chickens know is inevitable. There have been raccoon issues and opossum problems, and of course there have been hawks who visit the flock.

Kevin sent me an email a few weeks ago with pics of this photogenic hawk, wanting to know what type it was. He had some great shots of it to help with ID, but this one was my favorite.

I’m not certain how many chickens have been lost through the years to hawk attacks, but from the stories he tells the problem is more often a raccoon or a neighbor’s dog. I was really surprised to hear that dogs would be a problem to chickens, but it happened. A few winters ago before my brother rebuilt the chicken coop he had hawks that were getting inside the coop to attack the chickens – imagine that! I guess late winter is a lean time for predators and they are desperate for food.

The original chickens we gave them were Bantams, who make little tiny eggs, but I’m not sure what variety he has now. He collects the eggs and lately has been using them to make a Pennsylvania Dutch Specialty – pickled beet eggs – yum! A recipe is available here. I love to visit when there are baby chicks, who will follow you around peeping. My brother lets them *forage* for bugs in his vegetable garden and feeds them raspberries from his bushes. He also turns over logs and rocks to help them find crickets to eat, but that’s another story! He used to have one really nasty little rooster that liked to attack people, so you had to carry a stick out in the garden, just in case he cornered you. I think they must be begging for breakfast in this last pic, just outside the back steps. Wouldn’t that be a nice sight first thing in the morning?

Has anyone noticed that the mid-week bunny fix has moved more towards the weekend? I originally started posting bunny pics on Wednesdays back in the spring because that is my teaching night. The bunny fix is an easy post that I can do quickly when I’m brain dead after working the day job and then teaching my class until 9 pm. Anyway, I’m teaching on Thursdays this semester so the bunny pics will be appearing on Thursdays until some time in December when the semester ends.

Back to Peeper, the bunny by the window. Our routine is for her to have a half hour or so of *out time* in the morning before I go to work. She chews on the door edges of her cage until I let her out. That sound drives me crazy so it’s an effective strategy on her part. Once I’m home in the evening and settled I let her out again to romp and play for a bit. We’re still at the stage where I feel the need to supervise her out time because she likes to get into things. She digs at the floor and the carpet. She pulls papers out of the wastebasket. She races around the room, literally bouncing off the walls. A few times I have come into the room to find her perched on my desktop. She jumps straight from the floor, up three feet, to the top of the desk. But her favorite thing to do is to sit on the hope chest and look out the window. None of the other bunnies have ever done that so it amuses me and I take a lot of pictures of her there.

I have pics and a story to share, but a lack of time and patience for Blogger’s wonkiness tonight.

Sensing this, Blogger vaporized my first attempt at this post. Now, more than an hour later, my laptop battery is about dead and I’m giving up for the night.

This is a pic of my niece feeding her chickens. The chickens are my fault.

Check back another time if the story interests you. There are hawk pictures.

‘Night.

“Twilight is a time for sharing – and a time for
remembering – sharing the fragrance of the
cooling earth – the shadows of the gathering dusk –

Here our two worlds meet and pass – the
frantic sounds of man grow dimmer as the light
recedes – the unhurried rhythm of the other
world swells in volume as the darkness
deepens-

It is not strange that discord has
no place in this great symphony of sound-
it is not strange that a sense
of peace descends upon all living things-
it is not strange that
memories burn more brightly-as the things of
substance lose their line and form in the softness
of the dark-

Twilight is a time for sharing- and a
time for remembering-remembering the things of
beauty wasted by our careless hands-our frequent
disregard of other living things-the many songs
unheard because we would not listen-

Listen tonight with all the
wisdom of your spirit-listen too with
all the compassion of your heart-
lest there come another night-
when there is only silence-

A great
and
total
silence-“

WINSTON ABBOTT

*Really bad pic of the Tribute in Light taken this evening from the North Beach Observation Deck at Sandy Hook. A small group of strangers met in the gathering dusk. The sunset on the bay was fantastic, night herons and small flocks of canada geese flew past us at eye level, and the lights from NYC lit up the clouds.

The holly forest at Sandy Hook comprises some 264 acres and is said to include the largest concentration of American Holly on the east coast. I went on a NPS ranger-led walk this afternoon that focused on the ways the Lenape Indians used the natural resources available in the forest and salt marsh to survive. Sandy Hook and much of the mainland in the nearby Highlands was *bought* from the Lenape in 1678. The Lenape had used the area for hunting, fowling, fishing, making canoes, and harvesting food from the natural vegetation. The wild beach plums were one of the main attractions of Sandy Hook for the Lenape and the fruit was collected and dried. The photo above is the fruit of the Prickly Pear Cactus which is widespread on Sandy Hook. The fruit can be harvested (wear gloves to avoid the spiny parts) and made into jellies, dessert sauces, and one company even uses it to make lemonade. In Mexico, the fleshy part of the cactus itself is used in many recipes, including omeletes. The Lenape likely used the dried seeds to produce a product similar to flour. The fruit tastes somewhat like watermelon and is full of tiny seeds.
On our way to the holly forest, walking through the salt marsh, I found these Fiddler’s Crabs at low tide. They scurry about in the sand foraging for food and doing maintenance on their burrows. I wasn’t able to get a close pic, but the males are the ones with the large claws, which they wave around to attract a mate to their burrow. The Fiddler’s plug up their burrows with a ball of mud during high tide, trapping a pocket of air inside, and emerge when the tide recedes. Northerh bayberry, typical of coastal habitats. The tiny berries are a food source for swallows and catbirds (I’ve read that Rails eat them also) and are also used in candlemaking.
Some of the hollies at Sandy Hook are thought to be as much as 170 years old. This tree was large, but was not the oldest among them. I loved the knobby look of the trunk. Today’s walk was too short and quick for my liking, but it was nice to see this part of the holly forest. The area is normally closed to the public as it’s part of a large wildlife management area. I didn’t see any osprey or terns today, and the platform in the marsh was occupied by a greater black-backed gull when we walked past it. I saw a few migrating monarch butterflies, but the goldenrod isn’t blooming just yet, so I can expect to see many more in the coming weeks.

I stole this meme from somewhere in the blogosphere and reworked some parts. Thought it might lead to some interesting reading if anyone else wants to give it a try.



Are you satisfied with your blog’s content and look?
For the most part, yes. I would like to be able to change the image in my header once in a while, but haven’t figured out how to do that yet. I wish I were more comfortable with HTML so that I’d be willing to experiment a bit more. As it is, if I think it looks okay I’m hestitant to change anything. Even adding links to the sidebar makes me anxious. I tend to write about whatever is floating through my mind each day and like to have pics to go with each post. I really enjoy the visual aspect of blogging, and enjoy photos or illustrations on other’s blogs as well as my own.

Does your family know about your blog?
Yes, they do. Whether they read it or not is another question.

Do you feel embarrassed to let your friends know about your blog or do you consider it as a private thing?
Embarrassed isn’t the right word for it. It does feel a little weird to have certain friends reading this. My boss, for example, who was *alerted* (thanks Deb!) to my rant about work from last week. Luckily, she laughed and didn’t write me up for the comment about menopausal coworkers. A few other people from work read that post (thankfully none of the people I was ranting about) and I got some positive feedback from one coworker in particular who feels much the same and was glad to know she wasn’t the only one at the end of her rope with it. A blog can hardly be a private thing, but it can almost feel that way when the people reading it regularly are strangers.

Has blogging brought about positive changes for you?
The discipline of writing each day is a good thing for me. I spend way too much time at it, but it beats sitting in front of the television. I read a lot of great blogs each day and enjoy reading other people’s perspectives. I’m glad to have encountered people who appreciate some of the same things as I do.

Do you only read blogs of those who comment on your blog or do you also like to find new blogs?
I like to find new blogs, but also visit the folks who comment here.

What are your thoughts on commenting? Is it important to you that people leave comments?
I probably only comment on half of the blogs I read each day. I try to leave good thoughtful comments, but oftentimes I can’t think of anything intelligent to say. Of course, I wonder how many people read my blog but never comment. One thing that bugs me are bloggers who don’t acknowledge comments. I think it’s bad form. Of course, not every comment requires a response, but there are certain blogs that I hesitate to comment on anymore because my comments are ignored every single time. Why allow comments if you’re not interested in the feedback you get? The comments I get here are important to me because I like the sense of community and the exchange of ideas.

Does your visitor’s counter matter to you?
Not on a daily basis, but I do like to see that I’m not always talking to myself!

Do you try to imagine what fellow bloggers look like?
I admit to having a *picture* in my mind based on the *voice* they use in their blog, yes.

Do you think there is a benefit to blogging?
Well, it’s fun for me, so that’s a benefit. I’m using my camera a lot more and writing a little each day. Plus, I feel like I’ve made new friends and gotten to *know* people I otherwise would not have. A lot of the blogs I read relate to natural history in one way or another and it’s interesting to me to see how sometimes we’re all thinking about the same things. Blogging has also caused me to realize that I have a lot to learn and I’ve been lucky to find a lot of knowledgeable people.

Does criticism of your blog annoy you?
So far everyone’s been really nice. Constructive criticism is good and welcomed!

Are there any types of blogs that you avoid?
I don’t know that there are any types that I avoid reading, but I do hestitate to comment on political posts or others where I don’t feel capable of contributing anything worthwhile.

Buddy doesn’t like to have his picture taken and will nearly always turn away when the camera comes out. Maybe he figures he looks best in profile. I had wanted to get a pic of his tongue, but he would have none of it. He’s a mix of Lab and Chow, so has black/purple spots on his tongue. That’s the only way you’d know by looking at him that he’s part Chow. He acts more like a Chow than a Lab; fearful of strangers and protective of his people. He’s only a *happy-go-lucky* Lab with my husband and I. He has at least a hundred squeaky toys – half of which are usually spread around the living room and under the bed collecting dust bunnies. When he’s not napping he loves to chase squirrels and bark at every person on foot that goes by the house. We call him “deputy dog” and he seems to like that name.