Dust bathing

With all the continuous rain we are having parts of the run remain muddy. Luckily the middle part is dry and today the girls were enjoying dust bathing.

Dotty and Pepper having a dust bath

Honey having a dust bath

Bluebell having a dust bath

Here you can see how muddy the run is at the veg plot end. The leaves have given the girls two weeks of fun but were now wet and muddy too. I decided to pick up all the leaves and dig over the run.

The run looks a bit cleaner

In the bottom right hand corner are the girls cabbage leaves. By the end of the day they will have disappeared.

Bottoms up

I threw the girls a few sunflower hearts and beaks went down and tails went up.

Yesterday my husband was watching me poop pick while the girls followed me around. Bluebell was stood on my back and the little girls were doing their usual thing of circling me and trying to pluck up courage to jump up too. Suddenly he said that one of the little girls had jumped on to my back but as Bluebell was there she fluttered straight back down again. This was the first time she had done this and she was so light that I couldn’t even feel her.

This morning when I was cleaning the coop out the big girls were in the garden and Honey was in the coop watching me to make sure I was doing a good job while Amber was beside me. Suddenly I felt the light weight of Amber on my back. She stood there for a few seconds then fluttered down.

We have had the little girls for nine months now and they have only just worked up the courage to jump on me. I felt really pleased because I love this interaction with the girls. I think they must learn this from each other because the little girls always watch when the big girls jump on me and have looked as if they would like to join in for ages.

When I clean up the little girls are always with me and get so close to my hands and feet and love to get on eye level with me but they absolutely don’t want to be picked up or touched. They like to get really close to me but completely on their terms. This makes it all the more special when they jump on me.

It will probably take a while to get a photo but I hope we will get one at some stage.