The hatchery chicks are on the move. I had two broody hens and gave each of the hens half of the chicks nine days ago, the morning they arrived. The hens keep the chicks busy much of the day, from earlier morning until late afternoon. See how she tilts her head from side to side to see if there is danger ahead? And when a chick needs some reassurance, she’s never too busy to comfort it.

Just one of her chicks roosts with Molly at night. The rest of the chicks roost on their own, though during the day, they run around with their mother. Even from a tender age, their personalities come through.

On a midsummer evening, the chickens are out late, gorging on sunflower seeds. With sunshine, good food, good friends, they should have pleasant dreams tonight. I read an interesting article that maybe even bees dream. That’s a nice image, a hive full of bees dreaming about all the flowers they visited that day.

This six week old rooster has taken to roosting on top of a screen door in the chicken coop. He sure has that dinosaur look with his big eyes, strong beak, claws, and scrawny feathers. Maybe one day he’ll be a proud father.

According to Vanderbilt University neuroscientist Suzana Herculano-ouzel, certain bird brains are much more densely packed with neurons than mammal brains. For example, a walnut sized macaw brain has more neurons in its forebrain than a macaque monkey with a much larger, lemon sized brain. Which may mean that ounce per ounce, birds are much smarter than mammals.

However this high density of neurons is true of songbirds and parrots, not of all birds. Emu, pigeons, and junglefowl, the ancestors of chickens, don’t have a high density of neurons in their forebrains.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tP-ZZBJPC8c&w=560&h=315]

You can read the study here: Birds have primate-like numbers of neurons in the forebrain

Summer mornings paint the sky a cobalt blue. Each season has its own blue for the sky. As they head out to forage and play, I wonder what the chickens, with their spectacular color vision, think of this cobalt blue above their head.

Or what are their impressions of the pink poppies which are opening? Do they think, “How would I look in that shade?”

It was a wet morning. The blades of grass were balancing big drops of rain from the night’s steady rains. Beardtongue are in bloom in the woods.

A flower that is far more bearded than beardtongue is the clematis that finished blooming. The white flowers have morphed into a Dr. Seuss creation. Their white flowers were pretty, but their seed pods are intriguing. What are they eventually going to look like?

A variety of Arisaema is sending up a purple fringed flower spike. Svenda doesn’t care. For her, it’s all about the worms she’s finding as I weed around the Arisaema. Maybe when it’s done blooming and develops seeds, she’ll think about pecking at it.