On the Other Hen....

Is it consideration, or is it a bribe?  As my flock dwindles this summer, Buck is trying harder.  He's putting girls in the coop earlier, and I have to close the door before dusk now, or Bandit, the raccoon gets all their eggs, and it's only a matter of time before he decides to take a chicken.  I'm not sure who has been taking chickens, but I have lost 2 during the day.  Buck now only has 5 girls, and he keeps them close, gets more upset when his current favorite runs off on her own, and hunts for little treats for them.  I have watched him catch a large fly, kill it, toss it down and make little short noises that are similar to what he says when he's tucking in to a pile of blueberries or watermelon - "tuk,tuk,bik,bik, tuckety, bickity!" and the hens run over to see what he has, he picks up the fly and drops it within beak range of one of the ladies, and they give it the eye.  He picks it up and pretends to eat it, "num num" he seems to be telling them, or [" Hey baby, how do you like the canoli?"] and they swallow the fly, say thank you in Avian and move on to the next edible.  They must have amazing taste receptors in their beaks, [ I heard on NPR that birds don't taste with their tongues ] because they get so excited about certain things, or the possibility of something new.
This weekend rain or sweltering heat aside, I have to enlarge the size of their restricted area, because I'm going off and leaving them in the care of my family to move an RV across the country, West to East.  This blog will be about that for a couple of entries, so if you don't want travelogue, skip it.