Charlie and the Chickens - Exploring

'Silver Birches' by Jon Lander

Walking down to feed the chickens I was surprised to see one of the Polands strutting in the Wood Section of the garden. This is the best photo I have of one of the Polands:

I'll try to do better. The Wood Section is small, for a wood, but very big for any wood we've ever owned. (We've never owned a wood.) It has silver birches in it, so the house is called Silver Birches:

The Poland disappeared, and by the time I'd opened the gate to the Chicken Section of the garden the Poland was strolling around in the middle of the others as if butter wouldn't melt. Can you spot her amongst the crowd? The Polands are the maddest looking, with spiky black and brown feathers and crazy wavy headresses. 

I found the place the Poland had wriggled through, in the corner between the neighbouring plant nursery, the Chicken Section and the Wood Section. And (I think) I fixed it. There was the perfect piece of chicken wire lying around (maybe it wasn't chicken wire, not really sure of the definition of chicken wire). A couple of days later we were coming back from a weekend away, having left the chickens and Charlie in the very good hands of a very good friend. Straight away we walked down the garden to visit them, and they were all in the wood. I exclaimed 'Chickens!' in case Jeremy hadn't spotted them. But he had. There are 11 of them, and they are noticeable. And noisy, in a good way. It turned out they hadn't escaped through the hole but through the gate, which was open. They love the Wood Section, it seems, but were very happy to follow us into the Chicken Section. 

Today's last photo is of Charlie on his first day in Silver Birches. We kept him inside for a month, but he's made up for it since. We'll come to his explorations next.