Liquid Winters and Time-Bending Blooms

Long time local botanist Betty Horn sent me an email some days back--February 10, to be exact--reporting that she had just found a hepatica blooming in Herrontown Woods. Hepaticas in early February? This was news. 

Without asking, I knew nearly exactly where she had found it. If you're a field botanist, you maintain a mental map of where you've found certain special plants growing, and in Princeton, my mental map has exactly one location for hepaticas, along the ridge in Herrontown Woods. Sure enough, she had found it there, given a head start by the warmth of a nearby boulder and the snowless winter. 

Hearing the news, another botanist friend, Fairfax Hutter, checked out some hepaticas she knows of in Hopewell. No flowers, nor any buds, she reported. Betty looked back at her records and told me that "the usual time for hepaticas to bloom is early to mid March, and sometimes as late as the first week in April." 

Another early flower is snowdrops--a nonnative spring bulb that decorates the grounds around Veblen House. The first bloom I noticed this year, for the record, was on Feb. 6.

Before moving to Princeton in 2003, I lived in Durham, NC for 8 years. Winters there were much like the one we've had here in New Jersey this year. The default was no snow, and if a snowstorm did come, it became a spontaneous holiday, with schools shut down for several days. It could be said that New Jersey is the new North Carolina, with Georgia in hot pursuit, so to speak. 

The shift towards a liquid winter has made for dramatic changes in our "fillable-spillable" minipond in the backyard. It's a 35 gallon tub that captures runoff from the roof, originally conceived as a pond that could be easily emptied when our pet ducks had made it muddy. 

Like an artist who has lost inspiration, it hasn't produced very interesting ice patterns the past few winters, nothing like that stretch from 2018-19, when intermittent freezes and thaws caused it to behave like a canvas for the profound artistry of nature. Each freeze would bring new and endlessly varied patterns in the ice. 

Ducks Visit the Backyard

A pair of mallards visited our backyard this morning. The male stood in the middle of the lawn while the female strolled down the garden path, presumably in search of a nice pond to call their own. Were they checking out nesting options? If so, I can't imagine they were pleased. The only standing water is the fillable-spillable tub that catches water from the downspout.

The most appealing interpretation of their surprise visit is that one of them might have been born here five years ago, back when through the luck of the draw we ended upt with a pair of mallards among our fine feathered pets in the backyard. Being a male and female, they soon had five ducklings to call their own. As the ducklings grew, the yard seemed to shrink, overfilled as it now was with ducks and chickens. There were times when we'd hear the nasal call of geese flying overhead, or one or another duck would fly in an impressive arc around the boundaries of the yard, and I'd think for sure they would respond to the call of the wild and venture off into the big world beyond our fenceline. But they never did.

The mallard family eventually ended up at a farm outside of town, whose owners were kind enough to take them off our hands. I read that mallards live 5-10 years in the wild. How lovely to think that they might have come back to have a look around at their old haunts.

For some posts about the ducks we had behind our house on busy Harrison Street, type the word "mallard" into the search box for this blog, or follow this link.

Duck Takes Nature Walk at Herrontown Woods

Young ducks are great for taking on nature hikes, imprinted as they are on their human caretaker. We had one come hiking up the trail recently to the Veblen House grounds while we were working on preparation for this Sunday's Veblen birthday gathering (come if you can).

A writeup on the duck, a magpie, is at this link.

August Bird Disappearance Solved

Two weeks ago, I received an email with the news that the water birds had disappeared from Mountain Lakes Preserve. Might something have been applied to the water to remove algae, with unexpected results, or were geese, ducks and herons simply imitating the general human exodus from Princeton in August? My contacts at town engineering and Friends of Princeton Open Space knew of no chemical applications.

Carnegie Lake, too, was empty of waterfowl, other than a couple great blue herons. One heron flew across the lake, flushed another near the opposite shore, chased it a short distance, then returned across the lake, flying low, its wingtips touching the water.

Smoyer Park's pond also was clear of geese. Had they finally taken note of the signage?

Maybe the fisherman's dog had scared the geese away.

The dog, upon closer inspection, turned out to be 2-dimensional, a metal dog profile placed there by the company contracted to periodically (futily?) scare the geese away. The fake dog looked to be faking out the geese, but the fisherman was skeptical, and told me the geese will soon be back.

Some responses from people in the know, plus some internet research, helped make sense of it all.

Plainsboro Preserve director Nancy Fiske forwarded a response from Scott Barnes, head of New Jersey Audubon's All Things Birds division:

"Most waterfowl tend to molt in late summer and are flightless for a brief period of time, during which they are secretive. I've seen typical numbers of geese around locally in the last few weeks; it may just be they've moved of a particular water body in Princeton. Geese will often change habits and feed at night around the full moon. As for herons and egrets, late summer is a time of wandering, where both adults and juveniles will move about from place to place taking advantage of local food sources and concentrations of fish at ponds/lakes with lower water levels."

Stephanie Fox, naturalist with Delaware and Raritan Canal State Park, added, 

"as for Herons, I believe they are still able to fly, but just not so efficiently, so they also try to hide out in less conspicuous areas until they have their full set of flight feathers."

That could explain why the great blue heron seemed to be struggling to stay above water, and perhaps it was acting territorially towards a young whippersnapper encroaching on its part of Carnegie Lake.

For those uninitiated in the ways of birds, like me, some general info about molting is at this link. The distinction between the "sequential molt" that most birds undergo, and the "simultaneous wing molt" characteristic of ducks and geese, can be found here. 

Thanks to Elliot for alerting me to this seasonal exodus. It would be interesting to find out where the birds go to be safe during molting, and whether it's one place or many.

Upcoming Events at Princeton's Rogers Refuge

Most people don't think of Princeton as having a large marsh to look out upon, but you can find such a view by taking Alexander Rd and West Drive to Rogers Refuge, down from Institute Woods. Though owned by the American Water Company, it is open to the public, with trails, a small parking lot, and observation towers.

This Sunday, April 10 at 10am, the group that cares for the marsh, the Friends of Rogers Refuge, will host a dedication to honor Louis Beck, "who, in his passion and enthusiasm for birds, inspired many to cherish birds and work for their preservation."

The dedication, like the marsh itself, is open to the public. Here's the announcement sent out by FORR president Fred Spar:

"As Bluebirds and Red-winged Blackbirds stake out nesting territory, and leaves begin to emerge on our row of willows, we are getting ready for spring migration at the Rogers Refuge. Thanks to the support of the Washington Crossing Audubon Society, we will soon be installing new informational signage and, in memory of our dear friend Lou Beck, setting up an extensive series of nesting sites for Purple Martins, Bluebirds, Wood Ducks, Tree Swallows and other cavity nesters.  

Please join us as we dedicate a memorial to Lou Beck and celebrate the coming of spring. On Sunday, April 10th at 10:00 A.M. we will convene at the main platform at the Refuge for a dedication ceremony, refreshments, and a walk around the marsh."

On May 8 at 8am, the Washington Crossing Audubon's Brad Merritt and Mark Witmer will lead the annual bird walk at Rogers Refuge. Details at this link.

The marsh is kept wet in the summer with the help of a pump that feeds the marsh extra water from the Stony Brook. It's a good example of how a volunteer Friends group can collaborate with town government and the private land owner, American Water, to sustain one of the finest birding spots in the area. The town maintains the pump, and its long-running deer management program has allowed spicebush and other native flora to rebound, greatly improving the nesting habitat for birds.

Take West Drive off of Alexander Road near the StonyBrook bridge, and keep left at the fork in the gravel road.

Teaching an Old Chicken Old Tricks

After a few years, chickens and ducks stop laying eggs. Our peking duck laid one egg per day like clockwork for several years, but stopped suddenly this past fall, even though she still waddles about the yard as robustly as ever. Our one hen remaining from the first batch, bought about four years ago, also stopped laying around the same time.

There followed then a lull of about a month, when we finally gave in and bought a dozen eggs at the grocery. Strange feeling after several years of home grown. Then, just as days were narrowing down to winter solstice, the three chickens we bought this past May came online, began their tour of beneficence, or however you'd like to describe the remarkable generosity that is a hen's nature. Though all are araucanas, one lays brown eggs, while the others lay variations on green and blue.

Then one day in late December a tiny egg appeared, as if a quail had happened by for a brief visit. Sometimes that can mean a chicken has just started laying. I wanted to believe the older white hen had found new inspiration. Hard to say, but if one looks closely enough at the greenish eggs, one can see three different shades, with one grayer, one bluer, and one just possibly from an old hen made newer.

Araucanas are sometimes called "easter egg" chickens, because of the varied colors of their eggs, and sometimes when the eggs aren't showing up in the usual spot in or near the coop, we do a good imitation of an Easter egg hunt searching for their new nest. I hear that Araucanas are also particularly resilient in cold weather. That will be tested this weekend, when temperatures are predicted to dip nearly to 0.

Trees and Thunderbolts

There's a puzzle in this picture, which shows one tree where two trees once stood. The second tree is evidenced now only by a patch of brown mulch on the left. The story told by Pam Ruch of Morven Museum and Gardens is that a lightning bolt hit the first tree, stripping bark from one side. They thought for sure that the wounded tree would die, but instead, a couple years later, the tree next to it gave up the ghost.

What happened? Apparently, the lightning penetrated into the ground, then traveled over to the root system of the neighboring tree, where the full electrical force was delivered. The effect was a deadly version of an old slapstick routine, in which the target of the punch ducks, causing the punch to land on the next one over. The first tree was conduit, the second tree victim. The first tree bore the visual symptom, the second tree bore the invisible brunt.

There's been a theme of thunderbolts lately. I've been memorizing a monologue of King Lear--part reveling in, part railing against the elements as he stands out in the heath engulfed in a storm, amidst "oak-cleaving thunderbolts" and "all shaking thunder".

And then my friend Perry sent me a photo of what we call the Lone Pine. Its bark, too, has finally been cleaved by a thunderbolt after many years standing alone on high ground at a nature preserve we created about 15 years ago in Durham, NC. There's such a thing as "witness trees", for instance trees at Civil War sites that were alive at the time of the battle. The Lone Pine is a witness tree of sorts, having witnessed the logging of all the trees around it some years before the land was donated to our nonprofit.

The outcome was more sanguine than King Lear's, because these 80 acres had a native seedbank waiting to mend the wound. With trees gone, dormant native forbs sprang to life in the newly abundant sunlight, coating the ground with a tapestry of sedges, grasses and wildflowers. Quail and woodcock flourished in the early successional habitat.

That rich chapter in the preserve's history, dominated by the height-deprived, came to a quick close, with the emphatic rebound of trees. If King Lear had been into land management, he might have railed against the sun-grabbing dominance of trees and the city's rigid ban on prescribed burns, and called on the thunderbolts to start some grass fires to maintain at least a few patches of open habitat, lest he lose the heath from which to call out his bottomless grief to the heavens.

The Lone Pine now has lots of company as young shortleaf and loblolly pines rise thick around it. But something in me misses that younger, more open habitat, when one pine stood lonely and defiant against the sky.

Note: When lightning touches sandy ground, it makes a material akin to glass, which happened some years back along the canal. My theory, untestable but which perhaps would find company in a google search, is that lightning gave early peoples the idea for making glass.

A Duck Gets a Taste of Spring

Our Pekin duck has been finding more reason to venture out of the coop this week. There's mud to probe with its beak, and the luxury of a bath in one of our backyard ponds swelled by snowmelt from neighbors' yards. She had no problem breaking through the thin layer of ice left by last night's freeze.

Earlier in the month, finding water in its liquid state was more of a challenge, as she took sips from the fillable-spillable minipond catching water from the roof.

She keeps a sharp eye out for hawks, turning her head to get a better look at the sky. Usually, that turn of the head means something's flying over, be it a vulture, crow, hawk, or a jet headed into Newark Airport.

Meanwhile, the duck's companion, a chicken of similar feather, was laying another robin's-egg-blue egg. We often get two a day now, as warmer temperatures and longer days have broken the winter drought.

Ducks and chickens made multiple appearances in movies this weekend at the Princeton Environmental Film Festival, particularly in the excellent documentary on permaculture, "Inhabit". The ducks were said to be excellent at keeping the slug population down on an outdoor shitake mushroom farm, and the chickens happily batted cleanup in one of the crop rotations, eating any seeds that eluded harvest.

Hawks and Chickens

In New York City's Garment District, a giant hawk-like creature stands proud and somewhat menacing, as traffic swirls all around. "Crafted from maple saplings", it is one of five "Avian Avatars meant to indicate transformation, encouraging the public to heed to the stories about current human impact on the changing natural world."

This particular one represents a falcon named The Taste Maker, described as "an idealist, a philosopher and an opinionated vocalist with a social vision." Sounds like the falcon should have a blog.

Out here in the suburban wilds of central New Jersey, nature is less filtered through myth. This Coopers hawk too stands proud, while indicating a transformation much more localized than climate change. Any ideals it might hold can't compete with the exigencies of hunger in a less than generous winter landscape. As for social vision, it goes along with the driving vision of nature, which in all its beauty and generosity is built on passing energy from one trophic level to the next. One creature dies so that another may live.

The hawk's most recent visit marked the end of an era, in a way. The backyard ponds still freeze and thaw, wax and wane. The native wildflowers planted along our reconstructed miniature tributary of Harry's Brook will rebound in spring. But one of our two chickens was less lucky.

We started several years back with four chickens--the ardent brainstorm of our younger daughter who I think was inspired by a movie she saw at school. Once parental resistance was overcome, the birds turned out to be a delight. We got them locally at Rosedale Mills, where they sell chicks in the spring so the birds have enough time to grow up before winter. Finally, a pet that truly enjoys the (fenced in) backyard, inspecting every square inch for any morsel of food. Skittering insects, wiggly worms, stray seeds--all were eagerly gobbled up and transformed into eggs with dark orange yolks. The hens got the run of the place all day, before being closed in the coop for the night.

Their success prompted followup requests for ducks--pleas so persistent that we finally caved, despite the seeming impracticality. The one-day old ducklings arrived in a box at the post office, in November--not prime time for frolicking in the backyard. They were unbelievably cute, like windup rubber duckies that followed us everywhere--endearing traits that surely contributed to their survival, first in a spare bathtub and later in a box in the sunroom, until spring came.

The ducks, too, flourished in the backyard, adding a complementary appreciation of water features to the chickens' preference for the backyard's terra firma. They loved the ponds, and thereby made a mess of the ponds, in much the same way our love of, and appetite for, the earth and its resources has made a mess of things. But at least their droppings on the lawn, unlike those of geese, were liquid enough to disappear into the ground, sustaining a landscape that was still people-friendly.

There was some attrition along the way. The first loss was a chicken early on, the one night we left them out. They had looked so happy perched up on a brick chimney on the patio that we got lax. A neighbor claimed to have seen a fisher that night. Raccoons seem curiously absent, perhaps because we have a dog. The second loss was to a Coopers Hawk one afternoon, in the fall, after the protective backyard foliage had dropped off. That daylight attack above all brought home the tough choice between giving the birds a high quality free range life and keeping them safely cooped up. Our grief was mixed with an awareness of how extraordinary are these wild predators, living by their wits.

Then there was a long spell of stability, as it seemed that the large, white Pekin duck, with its exaggerated waddle, big voice and intimidatingly pokey beak, was making all predators think twice. Along with this "guard duck", we had a smaller, more graceful runner duck and two remaining chickens, and were rolling in eggs, so to speak. Each duck produced daily, while the Aracana chickens each produced two blue or pink eggs every three days or so. We worried the ducks were talking too much during the day, but neighbors would tell us they loved hearing them. Their backyard calls were a welcome relief from the frontyard din of traffic along Harrison Street.

Whatever powers our guard duck had were not enough to deter a red-tailed hawk that finally shattered the sense of backyard calm on the evening we returned from the Climate March in Manhattan. I had been gone for five days, perhaps reducing the human presence in the backyard long enough to embolden the hawk. This time it was the runner duck, more upright, with more grace and less waddle than other ducks. It was enough to bring one closer in understanding of what a rancher feels after a sheep is lost to wolves.

By this time, my daughter had grown to highschool age, with her interests largely flown elsewhere than the backyard chicken coop. I had become, as with the family dog, the default caretaker. When a Coopers hawk last month claimed for its meal her favorite chicken, a brown beauty called Buttons, she took things more philosophically.

Do these losses take an emotional toll? Should we have kept the birds penned in rather than expose them to the risks, freedom and richness of the yard? I really can't say if we'd do things differently. There have been some hard lessons about how nature works, but a lot of joy and delight.

Our last remaining chicken, Buffy, keeps Daisy the Pekin duck company. The duck suddenly stopped laying last fall, and for awhile we had no eggs at all until Buffy started laying her baby blue eggs again, undeterred by winter's cold or the memory of the 2004 Kerry/Edwards campaign she perched next to at night. All those plastic signs left along the road can find new purpose winterizing chicken coops. Democrat, Libertarian--it matters little in this second life. I like to think that the air chambers in the hollow signs help insulate the coop a bit. Signs with hollow slogans might be even more effective.

One creature dies so that another may live. I'm not ready for that personally, but I'm ready to sacrifice, personally and collectively, so that changes don't overwhelm the lives of generations to come. There can be joy in that, too, a feeling of connectedness with those who follow--joy that comes with less risk, not more. Maybe that's the message to all who walk in the shadow of the looming falcon in Manhattan.

Past posts about our backyard chickens include the Joyce Carol Oats connection.

Kayaking Up the Mighty Millstone Marsh

If you ever tire of land, Princeton offers a complex of waterways that can be easily navigated by kayak or canoe. There's Carnegie Lake, of course, but also the canal, Stony Brook, and the Millstone River, which flows through a beautiful marsh just a few paddle strokes upstream of Carnegie Lake. A friend, who in the acting world goes by the name of Basha, had been singing the praises of the marsh this year, and we finally headed over there this past Saturday in late afternoon. The put-in is over towards Plainsboro, off Mapleton Road, next to the aquaduct parking lot.

If you've lived in Princeton for ten years without knowing where the aquaduct is, it's where the Millstone River ducks under the DR Canal, downstream of the Harrison Street crossing. Near this "aquaduck" is a pair of mute swans (a species of Eurasian origin, easily distinguised from indigenous trumpeter and tundra swans by its orange bill) that have become the DR Canal's version of rock stars since they had three babies, properly called cygnets. They quickly realized we had no food to offer. Body language here is suggesting which adult is the mother.

The wilder world of native plants and wildlife is accessed by paddling to the left, through a channel bordered by masses of spadderdock,

then under the newish Route 1 bridge.

The channel begins to narrow. The slim profiles of egrets, standing still in the water, become masses of pure white as they spread their wings to fly off. The native rose mallow hibiscus lines the banks in full bloom.

Along the banks and extending deep into the shadows are cardinal flowers, thriving in this year's rains.

Always on the lookout for something new, I found a marsh St. Johnswort (Triadenum virginicum), blooming on the bank.

This, too, was a welcome sight: partridge pea, apparently planted in a restoration site on the east bank. It used to have an easier latin name until someone changed it to Chamaecrista fasciculata. It's closely related to the sensitive pea (smaller) and wild senna (larger), both of which can also be found growing wild in Princeton, particularly along the canal.

One battle I fought for awhile was to get departments of transportation and other governmental entities to stop using the highly invasive Sericea lespedeza for erosion control and start using less obnoxious plants like partridge pea. Sericea lespedeza, also called Chinese bushclover or Lespedeza cuneata, is now taking over the gas pipeline right of way in Princeton, and is a big problem in tallgrass prairies in Kansas and elsewhere.

More successful was the battle fought by Basha and others against the Millstone Bypass, a road that would have been routed close to the Millstone marsh. She's keeping her files, knowing that bad ideas never die.

Another wildflower common in the marsh and along the canal is climbing hempvine. No relation to hemp.

One remarkable sight was wild string beans, produced by the native groundnut. In my garden, it has begun to take over since a tree was taken down and the extra sun fueled this vine's ambitions. Groundnut tends to produce lots of flowers but no beans, as if the flowers were a front organization distracting attention from the underground spread of its tubers. In the wild, it needs that aggressiveness to compete with the other aggressive species along the shores. The tubers, by the way, are said to be edible, and some efforts have been made to breed this plant for commercial food production.

It's a good year for arrowwood Viburnum berries. Note the toothed leaves, thus Viburnum dentatum.

Nearly all the buttonbushes had finished with their golfball sized blooms. Some had improbably oversized leaves. Buttonbush grows well in standing water along the shore, but can also prosper in wet ground in the backyard. In fact, many of the native plants flourishing in the marsh also do well in constructed raingardens in town.

Once you're up in the narrower portion of the marsh, it's best to keep right. Basha showed where heading to the left leads to a deadend. There's a low fallen tree you'll need to duck under at one point.

Mysterious but cleanish looking fluids spill from a pipe with Sarnoff's name and phone number printed above. Just out from this outfall, the surface of the stream is broken by periodic upwellings of water from down below. A faint smell of treated sewage can be detected.

Paddling further up would lead eventually to the overpass for the NJ Transit train, but even a brief visit to the lower end of the marsh has a wild feel to it. Among other sightings were great blue herons, a weasel, turtles, ironweed, and some less charismatic native plants like tearthumb. Beavers like the area, and have been known to slap their tails on the water to warn anyone getting too close.

Even a pile of branches rewards, or warrants, closer inspection.

On the way out, we again passed the resident egrets. A bald eagle flew overhead on its way down Carnegie Lake. Though we could have lingered longer and continued upstream, the whole trip took less than two hours. What a treat to have such habitat so easily accessed just outside of town, and thanks to Basha for the tour.

"Open Raingarden" Event Tomorrow

It's like an open house, except outside the house. The raingardens here at our urban oasis (by "urban" I mean a busy street in Princeton) are in full bloom, and I'd like people to have a chance to see them. Come by this Sunday, Aug. 17, 3-5pm. I know it's short notice, so email me if you'd like to stop by some other time. The address is 139 N. Harrison St in Princeton. Best to park on Ewing Street or Franklin Ave. if driving. Much of our backyard is fed by runoff from uphill neighbors, which feeds gardens full of native wildflowers, sedges and rushes.

Of the two raingardens in the front yard, one catches water from the neighbor's driveway. The other receives water from one of the front downspouts. The backyard is a reconstructed streambed--what once was a small tributary of Harry's Brook, visible on old maps--with a series of miniponds enveloped in all the native plant growth evidenced in the photo. The ponds vary from full to empty, depending on the rains.

You may also encounter a few charismatic chickens and ducks, and a "fillable/spillable" rainwater duck pond (patent pending). Included is a small "yard" sale, consisting of native wildflowers from the yard that have been potted up. Nearly all are local genotypes. 

And please bring any empty plastic flower pots you don't need. There are native volunteer plants sprouting out all over, and I've run out of pots.

A Flood-Ready Garden

This morning, Sustainable Princeton will host another in its excellent series of Great Ideas Breakfasts at the Princeton Public Library. This month's program is about water that comes through Princeton in all its forms: precipitation, runoff, drinking water, wastewater. I'll be leading one of the discussion groups, on the concept of resilient landscapes. Below are some photos of the stream that flows through my backyard during heavy, extended rains, and how I've harnessed that water to drive a productive and diverse habitat of native floodplain wildflowers, sedges, and (my daughter's contribution) ducks.

The water cometh from uphill.

In its path lies this normally tranquil scene, with a series of miniponds, a constructed stream channel, native sedges, rushes, and wildflowers building towards summer blooms, and a chicken.

After heavy rain falls steadily for a day or so, upstream soils become saturated and begin to shed any additional rainfall. The water begins to flow in from uphill neighbors' yards, bringing this ephemeral stream to life. When the rains stop, the plants will emerge unharmed and replenished, and a little of the runoff will have been held back, slowed down, by the series of check dams and miniponds.

Now looking towards the back of the property, a quiet "before" scene: our path to a little town park bordering our yard.

And a "during" scene, as rainwater runoff flows from the park into our yard, and gets redirected by a berm so that it will feed our ponds and then flow safely between two houses just down the slope from us.

Being ready to accommodate a flood also better prepares a yard for droughts. Slowing the water down allows an underground reservoir of moisture to form, sustaining trees and wildflowers through the dry times.

A "fillable, spillable" pond prototype--something of a mockup intended to give the ducks a place to swim during droughts. And, when the ducks have mucked it up the way ducks do, or when the mosquito wigglers appear, it can be easily tipped to spill and refill with clean water. Need to build a rock wall ramp on either side to provide ornament and also a means for the ducks to waddle up into the water.

The ducks love the heavy rains.

The chickens? Not so much.

Chickens in Joyce Carol Oats' Upcoming Memoir

Yesterday, the gravitational pull was felt strongly in nature. Oak catkins and spinning maple samaras fell pell mell to the earth, as if on cue. Our chickens and ducks too offered a unified response by each laying an egg. A "four eggs day", I like to call it, with each egg different in size and color--a reminder of what life was like before industrialized agriculture taught us to expect uniformity. Left to right, we have the fine creations of Buffy, Buttons, Molly and Daisy.

Later in the day, at the Princeton Public Library, famed author and local resident Joyce Carol Oats offered some fresh creations of her own. Though the reading was to be focused on her recent novel Carthage, she quickly turned to the memoir she is currently working on. It doesn't sound quite right to say that chickens loomed large in her childhood, because even as a little girl growing up on a farm, she would have risen well above them. But an extended portion of her reading described the special chicken she developed a deep connection to and called "Lucky Chicken". At a very early age, she believed that the rooster's call opens a crack in the world through which the next day can enter. She told of that special feeling a child can have, never to be found again in life, of the chickens rushing to her as she approached with their feed.

A child can learn a great deal about the emotional dimensions of life from being around chickens, experiencing love and loss, and even evil. She had said during her reading that probably no one in the audience had ever fed chickens, so I felt obliged during Q&A to announce that we have chickens and ducks and that Princeton allows this, as long as the neighbors are happy. She said that she'd be worried about foxes and other predators, and I explained that we have a "guard duck" that seems to intimidate the hawks, which are the main daytime threat. "But do you have a rooster?", she asked. No roosters allowed in town, I replied. "You have to have a rooster.", she said, speaking perhaps more metaphorically than literally. She went on to say that her sense of evil lurking in the garden of life came from roosters. She was a shy girl, and treated the chickens well, but even so the rooster would peck and claw at her, drawing blood.

With that, they segued into the book signing portion of the evening, at which point I headed home to make sure the chucks and dickens were safely in the coop for the night.

When a Coop Flew the Coop

The time came last week to move the chicken coop to the back of the property so that we could start beautifying the patio next to the house. The move came after months of careful planning and procrastination. The project was a good opportunity to use some of that used lumber scavenged from the local curbside kmart over the years. The chickens came over to check on progress, and to look for any grubs my large mammal activity might have stirred up.

Fortunately, the former owners had fashioned a platform of concrete blocks, used 50 years ago for a rabbit hutch.  We are simply carrying on an agrarian and can-do/do-it-yourself tradition established by the original owners. With serendipity as my co-pilot, I found that the pieces of the old coop could easily be unscrewed from each other and fit very well in the new location.

Even with serendipity, it took a couple days to make all the old coop parts fit together in a new configuration. It helped that the repurposed skylights didn't fall over and break, despite multiple close calls. Natural light is important in a coop, especially during winter when the chickens tend to stop laying if daylight isn't sufficient.

With most projects like this, there's a magical moment when the new space becomes real, when the end comes suddenly into sight, and all the hours spent feel worthwhile. Now all it needs is a few boards screwed over the openings, to keep any night predators out. With some interior decorating, what fowl could resist?

Well, the chickens and ducks were so habituated to the old coop that we had to carry them over to the new one each evening. After the third or fourth night, they finally bonded with the new coop and made the journey themselves. There's been a call for a coat of paint, though the weathered look has its charms.

Now, if we could only convince Buttons to lay in the coop, rather than hiding her eggs behind the hay pile. Sometimes we think one or another fowl has stopped laying, only to find a surprise somewhere in the yard after several weeks.