It Wasn’t the Fox That Ate My Chickens, Big Moth and Wild Turkeys

Sunday August 20, 2023 Guerneville CA.

Bad day for the chickens

When I went outside about 1:30 PM today, the chickens were at the gate to the front yard making a lot of noise like something wasn’t ok and they wanted to get through the gate, so I let them pass.

Lots of feathers

Just inside that gate was all these feathers. At first I thought the fox was here again, but I was wrong. It wasn’t a fox that got my chicken the other day and another one today. Nope.

 

Wasn’t the fox

I went past the feathers and saw a bobcat climbing over my six foot wire fence with my rooster in it’s mouth. The cat seemed to be having some problems, but it got over the fence and was gone with my rooster.

Freaked out chickens

All the other chickens went over  to this spot and settled down there for a good while, not wanting anything to do with the bobcat. They were pretty freaked out most of the day.

 

Pink ladies or naked ladies

I was over at my neighbors telling her what I saw as she helps take care of my chickens when she showed me some photos of a big moth in these pink flowers that are blooming right now.

 

Sphinx moth

I checked them out and sure enough there was this big Sphinx moth feeding there.

 

Naked ladies

She called it a humming bird moth which might be a better name for it. One of the names for these flowers are naked ladies as they bloom this time of year just popping out of the ground with no leaves or anything, thus naked.

 

Visiting neighbors

Later in the day, I wanted to ride up and visit some neighbors who live up on the hill tops.

What the heck

I took off and was surprised to find the rooster and the bobcat dead over in the orchard across the road. All I can figure out is the rooster must of mortally wounded the bobcat before it died and this is as far as the bobcat got, before it passed on.  I put a game cam on them so I might get some pictures of what’s left, if the darn cam works. I bet they are mostly gone by tomorrow morning.

 

Cam tipped over

I continued on up the hill and stopped here to get the game cams card, but, the cam had tipped over so there were no pictures here. I took the cam with me to move it to another spring later.

 

I rode on up to the other spring and retrieved the card there, but it said the card had an error, so no pictures there either.

 

Big rain drops

I continued on up to the ridge tops where the neighbors live going up this road when big rain drops started to fall, more of a drizzle of big drops, not enough to get real wet, so I kept going to the neighbors place, where the big drops continued for about a half hour before letting up.

 

The big drops where falling out of this sky, looking west towards the ocean.

 

Wild turkeys

I spotted these wild turkeys down below me as I was riding along. Two hens with two little ones is what they look like to  me.

 

I shot the bull with the neighbors for a couple of hours and then rode on back towards our place where I stopped for a break here, looking south from my sitting spot.

 

I stopped here by the dozer as I wanted to put a cam on the spring here.

 

I set the cam up here by the spring which should also capture anything that might go by on the road.

 

The chickens  had a hard time of it today, but if the bobcat hadn’t died, it would of come back each day for a bird and I’d soon run out of chickens. I have nine of them left.

Nice day,  except for the chickens and the poor bobcat that messed with my big rooster.