DEAR JOAN: Our neighborhood is dealing with a homeless chicken. It wanders the neighborhood, sleeping in the bushes or other places it can find. It comes to our yard frequently, maybe because we have several seed feeders that drop seed to the ground.
I don’t mind the chicken, but there is a sometimes heated exchange among neighbors over whether the eggs she lays are safe to eat, considering we don’t know what all she might eat, pecking away at so many yards.
— S.J., Cupertino
DEAR S.J.: Some people say they are perfectly safe, but health officials say it’s not a good idea.
Wild hens don’t have someone taking care of them, providing a clean, warm roost, nutritious food and health care. Because of that, the eggs may be contaminated with bacteria, primarily Salmonella.
If you want a more reliable source of healthful eggs, you and your neighbors could band together, build a coop, buy some chicken feed and adopt the chicken. Set up a schedule for coop cleaning, feeding and checking the water dispensers, and gathering the eggs, which can then be shared among the volunteers. You could even add to the flock by adopting hens rescued from egg farms.
It’s win-win. You get safe eggs and the homeless chicken gets the care it deserves.
DEAR JOAN: A little brown bird hurls himself/herself at our window some 1 meter away. He sits on the same branch, waits a minute and then does it again. This went on all day yesterday and is continuing this morning. I don’t notice any bugs around that might be an attraction. I am mystified. Why?
— Sidsel Millerstrom, Lafayette
DEAR SIDSEL: Your persistent visitor is a hermit thrush. The thrush isn’t particularly known for window knocking, like some other species of birds, but they will do it when motivated.
The bird most likely sees his own reflection and thinks there is another bird sitting in another bush, and he doesn’t like it. He flies toward the phantom bird, thus hitting the window. But that cheeky intruder just doesn’t get the message.
Your window might not have had a reflection at other times of the year, but the angle of the sun changes with the seasons, and it may now have become more reflective.
There is a slight chance the thrush will injure itself, or become so obsessed that it doesn’t take the time to eat, drink and do other thrush things. But if the thrush can see the reflection, other birds might, too, and it could get chaotic. There’s also a danger of birds trying to fly through the reflection, which can cause injury or death. Birds flying into windows is the second leading cause of bird deaths in the United States.
The sun will eventually shift, but until then, doing something to eliminate the problem is imperative. You can temporarily tape newspapers, cardboard or other material on the outside of the window; cover it with soap or tempera paint; buy commercial deterrents such as Acopian BirdSavers; install mosquito screens; or cover the window with one-way transparent tape or decals. The idea is to make the window as opaque as possible.
The Animal Life column runs on Mondays. Contact Joan Morris at AskJoanMorris@gmail.com.