Chick journal- FAQ's week 1.5

Portrait of a Golden laced Wyandotte chick

Chick of Golden Laced Wyandotte in grass

Questions about chicks-- By popular demand. FAQ's for week 1.5
1. The chicks are nearly three times the size they were compared to when they first arrived at ~ 4 days old.
2. They change from being chicks to pullets by adding feathers. In the past few days we have seen new feathers added to the few they have on each side of their bodies.   In the gallery included you can see which are older as little epaulets become wing-lets.
3. The are beginning to grow the very first little hints of tail feathers. Look at this chicks "tail" in the second picture. You can see a bit of fluffiness and brushy look to the feathers there (just barely). This is from some feathers coming in underneath and the change in the feathers/down at their backsides.
4. They are practicing perching and flying - or some combination - by flapping and jumping to scare and surprise each other.  They leap across the cage into the crowd of their sister chicks ... landing with peep-outbursts.
5. They always walk through their food first, balancing in it and feeling it squeeze between their reptilian toes.
6. Food is more fun, apparently, if stolen from your sister after a chase. It matters not if there is a plate of it-- cheeping and stealing is great game.

More chicks in the gallery for those who love them.  CHICKS HERE

Share your chick stories and help construct tell us when to expect what as they mature.
Thanks!

Spring chickens: little things to save the earth

Rhode Island Red chick sleeping in the spring Phox

Americans have taken to chickens with a earnest vengeance. With the seriousness of intention -- "I want to make a difference" -- a difference in the environment, the food chain, or our relationship to nature -- and the pleasure experienced when that something is chickens. More of us every day are adding these funny productive birds to our homes. For those of us first-timers our chicks are arriving this month. Lots of crazy peeping coming from new homes and more of us falling under their spell.

Here is a chicky slide show to celebrate.... Enjoy!
Spring Chicks - Images by Sharon McDonnell

Say this..."I am not in a hurry"

"It's ok. I am not in a hurry."

Say this to people & time slows down, 

You can hear it.. feel it...there are a few extra beats

&

a bit more air

 Plus

It surprises everyone. 

Try it.

Almost a Conversation

I have not really, not yet, talked with otter
about his life.

He has so many teeth, he has trouble
with vowels.
Wherefore our understanding
is all body expression—
he swims like the sleekest fish,
he dives and exhales and lifts a trail of bubbles.
Little by little he trusts my eyes
and my curious body sitting on the shore.

Sometimes he comes close.
I admire his whiskers
and his dark fur which I would rather die than wear.

He has no words, still what he tells about his life
is clear.
He does not own a computer.
He imagines the river will last forever.
He does not envy the dry house I live in.
He does not wonder who or what it is that I worship.
He wonders, morning after morning, that the river
is so cold and fresh and alive, and still
I don't jump in.

~ Mary Oliver ~ from Evidence)

 © Beacon Press, 2009. Reprinted with permission. (buy now) 

Welcome guest author Jane Flink from Columbia Missouri.   

The "Raging Grannies" Youtube video (see earlier post) and their rollicking response to CBS "right to life" advertising funds inspired Jane.  She mobilized her inspiration and wrote a wee story called "Gods Idea" and I have included it below.  

GOD HAS A GOOD IDEA - By Jane Flink

God is sitting in the Garden of Eden, contemplating all that s/he has made. “I want another experiment with Persons,” God thinks.  S/he wants to create a tiny Person.  S/he will call it a Baby and Adam and Eve will learn about themselves as they watch the Baby grow to be like them.

“Where will I put this Baby I will create?” God wonders.  “I could hide the Baby under a large cabbage leaf in the garden and when the Persons come out to gather food, they will find the baby.  But will they understand what a Baby is if they find it under a cabbage leaf?”  And God says, “That is not a good idea”.

I could drop the baby from the sky, God thinks, perhaps from the beak of some large flying bird.  But the Baby, as I envision it, would not withstand the fall to earth.  “So that,” God says, “ is not a good idea.”

God thinks longer.  “Perhaps I should first create a council of elders, made in the form of Adam, and when they open their council meeting lo, a baby shall be in front of them, and these wise elders can decide what to do with it.  But for all their wisdom, will they understand what a Baby is, and what a Baby needs?  God thinks it likely a council of elders would find a Baby only something more to argue about.

God’s mind roams over his/her creation. “I could give the baby to Adam, but he is always jumping and plunging into streams to swim and climbing tall trees.   Adam might not understand how to grow the Baby to become a Person, male or female, as I have created them.” 

As God is thinking, Eve strolls down a path near the place where God is sitting. She has built a raft to cross a stream to gather berries and along the way she finds a young rabbit, one of God’s newer Creations. Eve is playing with the rabbit, feeding it bits of lettuce from the garden and she and the rabbit roll over together in the soft grass.  When the young rabbit grows tired, Eve nestles it against the hollow of her throat. Carrying the rabbit, Eve finds a soft tussocky place under the shade of a tree and she and the rabbit curl up together, and they sleep.

God loves them all -- s/he loves the cabbages and the high-flying bird, and Adam and the Council of Elders, and Eve and the little rabbit and so it is  hard to know where to put the Baby he is planning to create.  S/he looks again at Eve and the rabbit.  When she found it in need of play and food and sleep and love she gave the rabbit all of them. The Baby God is thinking of would need all those things, not just for an afternoon; not just in cabbage season; not just when high-flying birds cared to carry cargo, or when councils of elders sat down to disagree. For the Baby, God wants love that will never die.

Finally, God decides.  He gives dominion over the animals to Adam.  But he gives dominion over the Baby to Eve, to carry inside her body until it is strong, until God himself can breathe life into its nostrils and make of it a living soul.  When God tells Adam about the animals, Adam leaps with joy. But when he gives the Baby to Eve, her head is full of visions of the blessing of life given and the sadness of life taken and the need for a love that never dies.

The sun closes down the day, casting shadows of blue and gold and God sits quietly, looking with satisfaction over all her/his Creation. “The one about the Baby,” God thinks, musing  –“that was a very good idea,”

The End....

Abortion politics is nasty business and unsteady ground.  It has divided and hurt us for so long.  In the middle of Jane's story I felt suddenly disorientated as if air was rushing into my mind bringing me a sense of space.   Into this space came laughter and its near companion, compassion.  We need all the questions, all the wisdom, and all the humor that we can muster for this collective heart-sore. 

Then, Jane added in our email exchange, "At any rate, God's decision carries everything I believe about how necessary and delightful and strong and needy and merciful and fun-loving and caring women are, and I have thought, since my first pregnancy, that God was a pretty wise old guy to put the Baby where he put it.  And if there are times when Woman finds she cannot give the Baby what it needs, and must part with it, I believe with all my heart that abortion is her decision and hers alone -- not only do I believe that, but I think God believes it, too. All those televangelists can't fool me!"


Thanks for being the inspiration for something i have long wanted to write!"    Love, Jane 

Ah but the honor is mine....Love Sharon 
and
Thanks to the Salonistas in Missouri and to other warm hearted strong minded women who have inspired us to continue to explore, talk, and listen.

 

The Field Sparrow

A bubble of music floats

The slope of the hillside over;

A little wandering sparrow's notes;

And the bloom of yarrow and clover,

And the smell of sweet-fern and the bayberry leaf,

On his ripple of song are stealing;

For he is a chartered thief

The wealth of the fields revealing.

— Lucy Larcom

See more Nests and nestlings  

in Gays pictures or try one of my new favorites
Birds bathing and fitness

Do you think I should submit this one for calendar?