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Wednesday August 30, 2017

Cheeky Chicks!


Our new brood of baby chicks in Soller!

It doesn’t matter how many times my hens spawn new broods of baby chicks, I always greet each batch with wild excitement and wonder. I know that a few will sadly perish along the way but I try my utmost to protect them from danger and to give them a fighting chance.

Of course living in the countryside in Mallorca brings all sorts of hazards for a baby chick, not least genets, weasels, rats and eagles and let’s not discuss feral cats roaming about the terrain. In fact it’s quite a miracle that any make it past their first few days of life and yet – hurrah- many do!

Our very raucous and imperious cockerel, Carlos II was – and he should remember this – once a tiny chick at the side of his father, Carlos I. Poor old Carlos I went to meet his feathery maker last year but his spirit lives on along with his lungs, in his cocky offspring. Who could imagine that this towering, crowing and feathery beast was once so vulnerable and small?

So today I celebrated the lives of our new brood and watched in wonder as they hopped about their mother, disappearing under her downy feathers whenever our local eagle made a beady-eyed swift recce of the orchard.

Who can say how many of this latest clan of fluffy little chicks will make it through the night but I console myself knowing that each day of life is precious and that these tiny souls certainly make the most of their time here on earth. Let us raise a toast to mother nature and to our tiny feathered friends everywhere! The world would be so much the poorer without them.



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