Its been a stressful couple of weeks for the chickens.

A falcon has taken to calling by on a regular basis, and inviting one of the chickens to dinner.

Falcons kill their prey with a devastating impact, and with claws puncturing the animal. When the victim is a bird, they then calmly pluck out the feathers before they tear them up. You know they’ve been visiting when you discover a puff of feathers in a pile. They might carry the corpse away, or they might eat their fill on the spot and drop the remains nearby for you to clear up.

The poor old chickens have gone from a busy, happy workforce industrially working through the olive orchard on a daily basis to fearful individuals who run from cover to cover.

The toll has been high. We had a set of six black bantams. Three are left. One hen had seven chicks. Three are left. In the stress of losing the others she has abandoned her remaining chicks and they are wandering dangerously about, forlornly cheeping and finding themselves at the bottom of the pecking order.

Local advice is “Shoot it”. I didn’t move up here to kill almost-endangered wildlife, frustrating as it is living alongside of them.

We’ve set up a series of screens and cover, within the chook compound. Ideally we should seal it off, and cover the entire area, but its big space…as big or bigger than most people’s backyard! The cost of covering that it is out of my price range at the moment, and maybe not something I’ll do longterm anyway.

Instead we’ve set up some knee-high barriers, using six by one metre sheets of sheep mesh….thin gauge galvanized iron grids. At a low height they provide running cover for the hens to duck under if the falcon returns. I’ve also stood large objects against the wall, and dumped some tangle prunings in the compound. They all provide different escape routes.

The other thing we’ve done is move all the hens into one area. We’ve got a couple of separate quarters, some more exposed and distant than others. Now they are all sleeping within the one compound. That ruffled a few feathers but they’ve adjusted pretty well.

The bigger Isa Brown hens are just as freaked as everyone else, but haven’t been touched. I think after today I know why: the falcon only takes birds smaller than a crow.

And I know this because today the crow that regularly raids the chicken yard for the scraps we give the chickens looked like it had a close encounter with the falcon. It was in the chicken yard when I went out to let them out of their secure cages, and made a half-hearted attempt to hop away from me. It was doing badly, and looking at it more closely, I realized it had puncture marks on each side of its back, and matching marks on its ribs.

By the look of it the falcon grabbed it, but it got away.

Badly injured, but nevertheless, it was too much for the falcon.

That explains the chicks, the bantams, and why the bigger hens haven’t so far been attacked.

So what we need are bigger chickens.