These are the girls!

Been keeping hens for about eleven years now as a parish priest. They make wonderful, moving garden sculpture, produce eggs for giving away, something for neighbours and local kids to enjoy, and mean that the first thing I know about a day is the temperature as I let them out each morning. The first three, bought as a celbration of being made priest in 1995, were called Hildegard, Marjorie and Julian - named for three medieval mystics, wonderful women who in their separate ways showed new ideas, new ways of seeing God. H,M and J the hens spoke softly to eachother and to me and helped get this godspoultry thing going. Marjorie, a buff cochin, took to doing assemblies at schools very quickly.

Soon, the three were joined by bantams, silkies and secondhand enormous hens called Brahmas - huge birds with feathery legs and a tweed coat appearance to their feathers. In all there were eighteen till Bill the rescue lurcher pup played with some till they died of fright. I gave the rest away in the hope of keeping them alive but despite a country residence they were soon eaten by a fox - seems rather natural really!

I gave up for a while till the lurcher was older and have, for the last two years have gradually built up a flock again - no names this time, it's too sad when they die! I've had Old Cotswold Legbars with their blue eggs, a white Sussex Star, a Warren (the battery hen sort of bird - scruffy, bad-tempered and a layer of wonderful eggs), Pekin bantams including a cockerel, an Araucana bantam who also lays blue eggs and then some ducks.
The first lot were stolen but now we seem to have settled. Last summer a hen and two bantams hatched out four ducklings. The lodger named the first one 'Steve' after himself! Two of the ducklings went in the theft but two remain, including Steve - both drakes - and are getting into the swing of spring!

Here's a picture of the tiny 'Steve' on his first picture shoot. Yes, ducklings really do look just like Disney said they did.

This year though it's not predators I'm so concerned about but the hype around Bird Flu. The virus is worrying in itself - I don't want the birds to get sick and I don't want them to be culled. Getting the flu myself seems so far away as a concern that i can't even consider it at the moment. I don't have space to put the birds indoors unless I keep them in the garage - they go mad anyway. So we are just waiting to see. Slimbridge isn't far away so if wild swans get it then there is a likelihood of it moving through Gloucestershire quite easily. But who knows? The media and the government seem to be very interested in promoting anxiety - I wonder why?