Bobcats with Chicken Breath, and Other Bedtime Stories
A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO, we experienced several exciting days, in a man-versus-jungle sort of way. After seeing a large bobcat out near the edge of the canyon in the morning, we later saw what appeared to be a mother bobcat and one of its babies. Evidently it was the day to train young Bobby to hunt. David actually saw the youngster grab a chicken and try to run off with it. The cat was so small that it had to hold its head up high to keep the chicken from dragging on the ground, hampering its escape attempt by affecting its ability to see where it was going. David made a loud noise close to the kitty. Young Bobby immediately dropped the chicken (which was apparently unhurt other than losing a large wad of feathers) and ran into the nearby berry bushes.
Meanwhile, I was stationed, with my camera, about forty yards away on the south side of the old black walnut tree, expecting the mother bobcat (with or without young Bobby) to head that way. Sure enough, Mama came out of the brush about twenty-five feet from me, just the other side of the walnut tree. She saw me right away, changed directions without missing a beat and bolted off across the shooting range into the bushes on the north side of the hill. Alas, I wasn’t able to get a photo; she was simply too quick. I live in hope, however.
Looking around the area where young Bobby had grabbed the pullet, we discovered several piles of feathers, all looking like they had come from our young New Hampshire pullets. We decided to do a head count that night after the birds were all tucked in, to try to determine how many we might have lost; we were hoping it was very few. We did realize, though, that we needed to do some serious strategizing as far as predator control was concerned.
One useful thing we did was to start educating ourselves about the hunting habits of the local wildlife. Bobcats, we learned, like to hunt at the edge of the woods, sneaking up on their quarry and staying under cover until the last minute, then jumping out to grab the unsuspecting prey. We’ve actually witnessed this, even in our front yard; the birds start squawking, and we take a look, usually just in time to see a cat jump over the fence, snatch a chicken in its mouth then leap back over the fence. It’s amazingly quick, and honestly, we have to admire the beauty and grace of these animals, even if we don’t always appreciate their choice of lunch entrées.
Keeping in mind their hunting habits, we began a major effort to clear away the brush, low-hanging tree branches and all the nettles, bracken ferns and other vegetation that grows like crazy during the mild, wet spring weather. We figured we could make it somewhat harder for the cats to sneak up on the free-ranging birds by taking away their cover. Since we really don’t want to completely confine the chickens and turkeys in fenced areas, this seems to be our best strategy. It’s helped greatly just to do some reading on the subject, to understand the hunting habits of bobcats and other predators; we now feel like we’re not completely at the mercy of the cats and hawks. We also plan to hatch more birds in the spring, to make up for occasionally sharing some with the native wildlife.
One Saturday morning, there were three bobcat attacks on chickens (that we know of). I witnessed one, which happened so fast I didn’t have time to get a photo. Good grief, are these cats speedy! Ironically, at the time, I was starting to clear out some blackberry and thimbleberry bushes, in an area where we suspected the bobcats were hiding out, waiting for some clueless foraging chicken to stray too near. Hearing the turkeys start up their ground-predator call, I looked up just in time to see a large bobcat jump out of the bushes and tall grass about 60 feet from me and grab a New Hampshire pullet. I have to admit that, although I was naturally upset that another of our birds was attacked, I also felt in awe of the beauty of this animal and the speed and efficiency of its attack and retreat.
Around the same time, David was down in Sequim, taking another of our hens to the vet. It had clearly also been attacked by a bobcat and had a deep laceration across its shoulders. David had tried to close the wound with Superglue (seriously), but it was too difficult to get the moist edges of skin to stay together. It was a valuable laying hen, so he took it in to get stitched up. The vet also gave us a solution to use to clean the wound several times a day.
I ran into the house and called David right after seeing the attack, and he headed home. I went back out, with something of an adrenaline rush going on and my camera in hand, on high alert for more signals from the turkeys that the cat was still around. I assumed that while I was inside telephoning, it probably had run back into the woods, although I was gone barely two minutes. When David got back and had put the stitched-up hen inside, he came back out, and we decided to try to flush the cat out of hiding, if it remained in the bushes.
It took only a minute. I was on the south end of the area in question, David on the north. He started hacking his way through the berry bushes with the Swedish brush hook, and suddenly a large bobcat emerged from the bushes about thirty feet from me. It saw me and pivoted, racing away to the west toward the edge of the canyon, the most likely place for its den. Although my camera was ready to shoot, I only managed to get a very blurry photo; man, that thing was fast! I also noticed that its feet made no sound at all as it ran. Amazing creature.
Shortly after this, I noticed one of our two New Hampshire roosters walking a bit awkwardly. He also seemed to have some loose feathers around his shoulder. Being somewhat hypersensitive to bobcat attacks at the time, I had David catch the rooster so we could examine him. Sure enough, puncture wounds on both his shoulders! The poor thing was clearly in shock. We brought him inside, and for the first day or so, we didn’t know if he would make it.
At this point, we looked at each other and decided that, whatever else was on the agenda that day, we needed to make it a priority to do what we could to protect our birds. Over the next two days, we cleared an amazing amount of berry bushes and low-hanging tree branches, mainly around the edge of the canyon and the bush-covered area where I had seen the latest attack.
We don’t expect to completely eliminate the problem of predation, of course, but we will continue to do what we can to make it harder for the cats to sneak up on the birds.
Goshawks Prefer Organic Chicken, Too
Last fall I was able to get some up-close and personal photos of a Northern Goshawk at our farm. Unfortunately, it was standing on the dead body of one of our young New Hampshire cockerels, but what can you do.
We speculated that the bird was a young adult male goshawk; it appeared to be almost completely into its adult plumage. And like most raptors, the male is smaller than the female, and this one couldn’t get off the ground with the dead chicken. (The adult goshawk tops out at 2.1 pounds, and this fourteen-week-old cockerel was easily twice that weight.) As I approached, the hawk tried to move the chicken, but it only managed to drag it a few inches across the grass. I wonder if the hawk learned a lesson from this.
I had been trying to get photos of a goshawk for a while now. Our friend Shelly Ament, a wildlife biologist with Washington’s Fish and Wildlife Department, told us that goshawks are not often seen by humans in the wild. (Ha, I thought. Try letting some chickens free-range in your backyard. Bet you’ll see some goshawks.) I retrieved a primary wing feather, which I saw fall while the hawk was flapping its wings, and we saved it to give to Shelly. She had asked us to be on the lookout for goshawk feathers. Her department is interested in comparing the genetics of goshawks in our area to those of hawks in British Columbia, so she was pleased to have the feather.
We understand that since we choose to free-range our chickens, turkeys and ducks, we’re likely to lose birds to predators from time to time. However, we feel fortunate to live in a place where we sometimes see beautiful animals like the Northern Goshawk. What a gorgeous bird.