Another week

Well it's been another whole week, unfortunately a whole week of full time work. Even with finishing early I am only able to get home at 4:50pm. By that time Greta has successfully convinced Lumi & Harriet to go to bed too and they're normally preoccupied with flapping their wings wildly, hitting everyone around them whilst turning around on the perch and fighting over who sits where. During all this mayhem they let me give them pats while I talk to them.

Unimpressed about noone else being in bed, and my proximity

On Saturday Lumi surprised me with something new. The chickens & I were all sitting next to each other whilst they ate grass, after a while Lumi turned around and started pecking gently at my freckles and pulling gently at my arm hair, but not like she was trying to eat them. It was extremely strange, it was so light it was kind of like tiny chicken kisses. It was easily the cutest thing any of these guys have done so far. Her voluntarily touching me feels like a huge step forward in her trusting me. It feels like all this time that I spend sitting with them and talking to them will be worth it. I was so worried about getting adult chickens because they might not respond to anything and be completely indifferent to us until the end, but things like this give me confidence that that won't happen.

Harriet looking fabulous

Lumi's & Greta's personalities are starting to show quite strongly now, whilst Harriet's hasn't, maybe because the other two pick on her? Lumi is greedy, bossy and not the smartest of chickens; and Greta communicates in varying levels of 'no'. She always reminds me of the Little Britain travel agent skit "Computer says no". She'll voluntarily come over and eat sunflower seeds out of our hands but after she's eaten them all, she'll run away because we're 'too close'. She's full of contradictions like that, but I think she'll come around in the end.

"Pretty sure I don't like you enough to come closer"

The affection of birds is so extremely different to that of other animals. Saturday really highlighted that for me. All afternoon & evening I was ecstatic that Lumi had nibbled at my arm. In the evening some friends brought their dog to our party, that dog was insanely adorable, requiring pats from everyone, he was full of affection and loved everyone instantly, that's just how dogs are. And there I was, happy that my chicken had nibbled at my arm. When you look at it in stark comparison it's ridiculous, however, it still didn't lessen the progress Lumi had made, or how happy I was with whatever level of affection she was willing to provide.