So get ready to meet the flock.
We have two buff Orpingtons.
The one on the left is Mini Max, though she might even be a bit bigger. The one on the right is Maxime. Maxime is the Alpha chicken, the top of the totem pole, and has a good mothering instinct - unlike the rest of the birds, she treats Molly and Shycra, the youngest and lowest-ranking of the flock well, and even roosts with them at night.
Mini Max isn't as nice, even to her nest-sister, Hawk - I've seen Max pull on Hawk's feathers pretty hard when they get into scuffles. Maxime and Mini Max are the trickiest birds to tell apart, and it's easy to see why.
However, once you learn how to tell them apart, it's easy to see how.
First off, Maxime is always a bit ruffled looking. Her feathers stick out messily as if she was in mid-moult and are more contrasted in color than Mini Max's; Maxime's nearly-white body feathers next to her darker, yellower neck feathers look very frankenstein-ish compared to Mini Max and her better-transitioned and overall more even-colored feathers.
As bad as the light in this picture is, it's easy to at least see her ruffled and messy feathers.
But, in my opinion, one of the best ways to identify Maxime is by her eyes. While Mini Max has a sort of stern to normal expression most of the time, Maxime... always looks rather....
Alarmed.
...Whereas Mini Max is sleeker, calmer, and all-around more healthy-looking than Maxime.
Then there's Sybil, bullier of me and the rest of the flock.
She's a Naked Neck, or Turken, so don't feel sorry for her. She's not the henpeckee, she's the henpecker.
She also hates people, shoes, me, other chickens, cats, dogs, anything living or formerly living, and cameras.
"Whatever the cluck that thing is, I want it out of my face, and I want it out of my face now. I will peck, I tell you, I will!"
...And that's why I have so few pictures of her, those I have managed to take mainly featuring her loathsome 'I'm going to kill you' face and/or a messy blur as I jerk the camera out of the way of her razor-sharp beak.
She pushes me around, pecks me, challenges me and goes after my swampy green crocs (I suppose no one can blame her there), but recently I've been trying to show her I'm not afraid of her and not a lower ranking chicken like she thinks I am. I think it's working - if she tries to peck me or challenge me I give her a swift (but not too hard) bop on the head, like another chicken would do to a lower-ranking one. Of course, there are good days and bad days, and at the moment I have a half-written post about the long battle we had a couple days ago, in which she actually drew blood.
Then there's Minerva, who has the softest and prettiest feathers in my opinion. She's quiet and doesn't have much of a personality, but I like her and her mild-mannered-ness.
She's a black Australorp, and not very interesting as far as chickens go, to be honest. She picks on Hawk and the two little girls, Molly and Shycra some, but she's not a very bad henpecker compared to some of our birds.
Hawk, on the other hand, has a very interesting story to tell, as ridiculous as she looks in this picture.
"Hom nom nom"
She is an Easter Egger, or some breed like that. She's very pretty, lays brown eggs like she's not supposed to do and Survived a fox attack (unfortunately, her nest- or perhaps egg-sister, Luna, didn't). The story's rather long, so I won't write it out here, but it was quite dramatic and traumatic for both the humans and chickens involved.
Unfortunately for me, hawk is rather camera shy, so getting a get picture of her is tricky. Nonetheless, I'm sure that such a pretty chicken like her makes the whole species she was named after proud (or perhaps just hungry).
Here she is, a bit more elegant looking.
Look at that pretty beard and those beautiful orange and brown feathers! She could be a chicken model! Just, uh, wash the straw and dried milk out of her beard...
"Hey! Are you taking pictures of me again?! You know I don't like cameras!"
She's a sweetie, but very shy. Her and Mini Max are inseparable, and even then Max henpecks her, sometimes badly. She's a lapchicken, too. If you sit down she'll hop up on your lap and hide her head under your arm and sit for as long as you can put up with it. If she wants someone to snuggle with she'll call and call and call, a loud, insistent "Bup bup bup bup bup bup bup bup bup bup bup bup-" on and on until you come in to sit with her. But, being so low in the pecking order she does whatever it takes to stay where she is in rank, pecking Molly rather hard whenever she gets close (Shycra's just too skittish to get near Hawk in the first place).
Next up is Molly, the annoying, persistent, quick, reckless bug-hunting Red Sex Link.
She's also rather camera-shy. But, being the most relentless and aggressive hunter in the group, she'll dart in past even Sybil or Hawk (the ones who henpeck her the most) just to get a bite of food. She has grasshopper-seeking invisible glasses on, too, I'm sure of it (how else on earth would she be able to find them so easily?), and she's fast and fearless. She's rather gluttonous, too.
She's one of my favorites, because she's just to darn good and hunting! Unfortunately - and I think this is why she's become such a successful bug hunter - she has a habit of not just pecking, but grabbing and holding. Needless to say, It can be rather painful if she sneaks up behind you in the coop, so I always keep an eye on her when I'm sitting with Hawk or feeding them.
"What's that? Can I eat it?"
"...Wait a second... you said that was a grasshopper generator! You lied, didn't you, it doesn't make delicious food, does it?! Is it that darn picture-taking thing again?!"
And, last but not least, there's Shycra.
She's a White Leghorn, I believe, and her name fits her quite well. She's the lowest-ranking of the flock, extremely shy and skittish and runs away at anything. She's afraid of cameras, dogs, other chickens, humans, and pretty much anything new. Funnily enough, though, that doesn't stop her from being almost as good of a worm-eater as Molly is (it's especially funny to watch her regal comb flop comically around as she darts back and forth to gobble up worms).
She's the only bird in the flock who lays white eggs, too, and she's quite the beautiful (and stereotypical) chicken when her white feathers aren't cream-colored from dirt. But that's the downside of having anything that's white, I suppose!
Oh, and I know I said that's the last, but I can't forget Zen!
...Sure, she's not technically a bird even, but she must be part-chicken, because whenever she has the chance to get into the chicken coop, she does. I think it's the abundance of mice.
"Oh, hi. What're you doing here?"
Whatever the reason, the chickens don't mind enough to drive her off. They mainly make alarmed and confused clucks and avoid her as she slips by, trying not to be pecked by one of the braver hens.
Sometimes she even catches a mouse, and then, oh boy, the chickens have a ball. Well, the one who eats the mouse does, at least.
Oh, and the pecking order goes like this, as far as I can tell:
Maxime
Sybil
Minerva
Mini Max
Hawk
Molly
Shycra
Oh, and apparently it's the second annual draw-a-centaur-day. Hrm, I suppose I should go do that.
-Willow
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