Well, this is more of a story than a question, but I'd be interested if others have similar tales. I have 38 chooks, all were new in May. I converted what had been the llama pens to their yard; it totals about 3/4 acre. Now, here in the Alaska Range, we have quite a few jaws out there interested in chickens: from the ground, short-tailed weasels, river otters, lynx (LOTS of them!), coyotes, fox, two neighborhood dogs, and theoretically wolves, wolverines and grizzlies (forget about the latter three). From the air: bald eagles (110 in the 2 1/2 miles of river up from my compound two weeks ago), great horned owls, ravens (one ate 5 of my friend's 2-week olds back in Fairbanks), red-tailed and rough-legged hawks. Well, I secured the ground by extending the fence horizontally on the ground by about a foot, and then laying scraper blades the entire perimeter. Scraper blades are the business end of road graders, and that is a lot of very heavy steel. Nothing short of a grizzly could move them, and they'd just go right through the fence anyway. It helps there is a DOT station as my neighbor - thousands of feet of old scraper blades for the taking. But it was the aerial defense that was unique. I initially had planned to drape a few thousand feet of old salmon netting I'd acquired as "roofing", but it was not necessary. You see, I have the great fortune of having a merlin nest in one of the spruces directly over the coop. Now, a merlin - a medium-sized falcon - is, indeed, a bird-eating bird. However: 1. They take birds from trees, and on the wing. Falcons do not take birds on the ground. 2. Once the chooks were a few months old, they were too big for the merlins, anyway. 3. Most importantly, however, merlins have the extremely well-deserved reputation of being the feistiest raptor there is. They will not allow ANY threat to come within their territory, which, in this case, is a circle with a radius of about 200 yards from their tree. No magpie, raven, hawk, owl or eagle ever could venture in that circle without badly regretting it. It is extremely amusing to see this firecracker - barely the size of a bald eagle's head - swarm and stoop and harass a monstrous bald eagle that makes the mistake of venturing down the Gulkana River into the danger zone. The ravens, very intelligent, learned their lessons immmediately. And I've not lost a single chook. So there you have it - my birds being protected by a devil guardian from above.

-- Audie (paxtours@alaska.net), November 15, 2001

Answers

Audie, that's a great story! Does a Merlin return to the same nesting place each year or will you be out of luck next year?

-- Jennifer L. (Northern NYS) (jlance@nospammail.com), November 16, 2001.

Way cool Audie, I really love raptors, and you get to observe them in their natural habitat this close, and enjoy their efforts at protecting your chickens, again, this is sooooo cool!!!

-- Annie Miller in SE OH (annie@1st.net), November 16, 2001.

gotta luv it....lololol

-- Lynnda (venus@zeelink.net), November 16, 2001.

Another Raptor lover checking in.

-- Ann Markson (tngreenacres@hotmail.com), November 16, 2001.

Fascinating Audie. I love to hear stories of how people solve unique problems and particularly stories of Alaska. I have dreamed of traveling to Alaska since I was a child. Tell us more!!!

-- diane (gardiacaprines@yahoo.com), November 16, 2001.

Audie, Merlins are great! A story about how tough they are. My husband,our neighbor and I were standing out in our meadow gossiping in the late spring. Faster than the speed of sound(well, it seemed like it! LOL )a little Merlin zoomed across the pasture, over our meadow about 6 feet off the ground and slammed right into our large( 10 foot) Satellite dish! The poor little thing just rolled over and over and tumbled off the edge of the edge of the dish to the ground. I walked over to pick up the body and that tough little bird got to her feet, staggered around a bit and took off apparently none the worse for wear! I had taken off my overshirt to wrap her up in it and take her inside but not needed. The serious injuries were to our big dish which, once we really looked at, had a whole quarter panel sprung and a dent from that intrepid bird! We had to replace that whole quarter panel. Amazing! LQ

-- Little Quacker (carouselxing@juno.com), November 16, 2001.

Jennifer - The merlins have been nesting here at least since the mid 70s. They use old magpie nests. Some years the magpies return before the merlins, sometimes not. There are enough nests here to go around. I'm down to my last malamute, an 11-year old spay. She's a real sweetheart, but when she was with her sister...well, dogs in packs.... anyway, she got very very jealous this last summer seeing me bringing restaurant scraps into the chookyard. She's usually tied, but one day she was gone, and I finally found her in my "fox-proof" chickenyard. She wasn't harrassing the fowl at all, just very happily enjoying the scraps, with half the chooks on one side, half the other, none too close. Delighted to see no feathers and blood, I couldn't relally discipline her. Later in the summer she did it again, but this time, all the animals were merrily eating alongside each other. So I found the offending fencehole, end of that chapter. But to finish up...Voxy now lives in the chickenyard, never paying them any mind. A malamute, of all breeds! More later.

-- Audie (paxtours@alaska.net), November 16, 2001.

OK, here's a dumb question from a 50 year old city gal trying to be a country gal....what the heck is a chook? I understood all the other animals and birds, but chook?????

MissJudi

-- MissJudi (jselig@clemson.edu), November 16, 2001.

Chook = nickname for chicken. As in "Heeeeeeere choooook choook chook!"

-- Audie (paxtours@alaska.net), November 16, 2001.

Annie from SE OH and other raptor fans: if this link works, you can see my photo of a juvenile merlin and some others (sharp-shinned hawk, lynx, hawk owl, fox) on my gallery page on photo.net (another site created by Alan Greenspun, the creator of this site). Click to:

http://www.photo.net/photodb/

(to be continued)

-- Audie (paxtours@alaska.net), November 16, 2001.

(cont)

darn! why isn't that a hot link?

then go to "Browse by photographer"

then enter "Bakewell"

and (it takes some time on my slow modem) you'll get the list of photos by those whose names begin with "B". Find Bakewell and you can view them.

I'm sure there's a faster way, but I don't know it.

-- Audie (paxtours@alaska.net), November 16, 2001.

Ms. Judi, thanks for asking my question I didn't know what a chook was either! -Debbie in MO

-- Debbie Trimble (risingwind@socket.net), November 16, 2001.