Love/hate relationship with birds of prey

Every two months I take three hours to rotate our laying chickens to new pasture. This last time I spent much of that time contemplating the pros and cons of birds of prey.

As soon as I took down the protective ceiling in our day-ranging setup (think of one of those big vertical nets at a golf range mounted horizontally on rebar), eight eagles almost immediately found me. Amazing.

They spent the next hour doing flyovers and deep dives checking out the availability of a take-out lunch. I got to appreciate the huge beauty of a full grown eagle not more than 20′ from me, doing a flyby at less than 10′ off the ground that would do a Navy fighter pilot proud.

And as soon as I got the ceiling back up, the chickens came out from their portable coops and the eagle family disappeared over the treetops.