Natural Perspectives:

Vic and I missed two big events recently. When the Huntington Beach Wetlands Conservancy held its celebration of the opening of Magnolia Marsh to the ocean, Vic and I were out of town on a field trip with his natural history class.

Gordon Smith and Gary Gorman have worked for decades to restore the wetlands in that end of town, and it’s wonderful to see such good progress. Our local coastal wetlands and the wildlife that depend upon them have greatly benefited from the ongoing efforts of that dedicated group.

The other event was the opening celebration for the new pedestrian bridge in the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve at Warner Avenue near Pacific Coast Highway. Vic was in class that morning, and I was staying home and out of the sun after some recent treatments to my face for pre-cancerous growths.

The Amigos de Bolsa Chica, Bolsa Chica Conservancy, Bolsa Chica Land Trust and California Department of Fish and Game put a lot of time and effort into making that bridge a reality. We’re glad the bridge is finally open.

Vic and I saw a letter to the editor in the Independent recently criticizing the pedestrian bridge as unnecessary. Well, that letter must have come from someone who has never led a group of schoolchildren across the Warner bridge. There was no sidewalk, and car and truck traffic was a constant hazard. I’m amazed that with all of the groups that crossed that bridge over the years, there were no accidents. The many school groups who start their field trips at the parking lot by the Bolsa Chica Conservancy will be much safer, as will the restoration groups from the land trust with their carts, wheelbarrows, plants and tools. Vic and I are thrilled that the new bridge is up and operational.

This might be a good time to catch you up on what is happening in our backyard chicken coop. We’ve had our “girls” for six weeks. Each lays about five eggs a week. We manage to eat most of the eggs, but have given away some to our son Scott and his family.

One of the really nice things about our chickens is that they eat many of our leftovers, as well as vegetable and fruit peelings. Waste from the coop goes into our compost bins, along with any food scraps or garden refuse that the chickens don’t care for. We have a real “circle of life” thing going on in our backyard.

Fortunately, the chickens are neither as noisy nor as smelly as we had worried that they would be. They like to greet the dawn, however. Hens don’t crow like roosters, but they certainly let their presence be known.

Henrietta, the black Australorp, is the noisiest of the three hens. She gets distressed if she is alone in the run while Henny Penny and Chicken Little are in the coop laying eggs. She sets up quite a squawk, an alarm call that is designed to help her locate the rest of the flock. But in her mind, I seem to count as one of the hens. She settles right down if I go out and talk to her.

To boost the healthy Omega-3 content of the eggs, I feed the chickens a lot of greens. We grow a surplus of cilantro, parsley, sorrel, kale, collards and nasturtiums, all of which are relished by the “girls.” I feed them several handfuls of greens and/or weeds a day. Of course, that has conditioned the birds to expect food whenever they see me. Now they jump up and down like dogs whenever I go out into the yard. All three of them will eat out of my hand, and Henrietta will let me pet her as long as I don’t linger.

But chickens aren’t the smartest animals in the barnyard. The hens repeatedly kicked the straw and hay in their run into their watering device, so I put it up on bricks. They still kicked litter into it. And, once the watering device was up higher, Henny Penny perched on top of it as a kind of “king of the world” statement. Or in her case, queen of the coop.

Chickens will poop anywhere they feel the urge, and Henny Penny was fouling the water every day by perching on top of the waterer. I’m not in the chicken business to make more work for myself, so I figured out a solution. First, I bought a different type of watering device from Midway City Feed, one with a sloping top so Henny Penny couldn’t perch on it. Then I put it on a small table that I put into the run, well above the kicking of the flock. Yes, the chickens have furniture.

Let me explain. This coffee table was one that my father built out of plywood and four metal table legs in 1955. I painted it as part of a high school home economics decorating project. But it had seen better days.

My family didn’t throw things out readily, and it’s a trait I’ve either inherited or absorbed. My mother moved the table from Indiana to Florida to Huntington Beach, where she kept it on her patio to hold plants. As the table aged, she covered the top with linoleum. When she passed away, I moved the table to our deck, also to hold plants. The layers of plywood have begun to separate. That table looked ready for the trash heap. But it was good enough for a chicken coop.

The chickens hop onto the table to drink from their watering device. They scratch in the straw and hay underneath. That old table has effectively added some square footage to the area that the chickens have in their run, and has given them that higher vantage point that they seem to crave. They can play “queen of the coop” two at a time. And they no longer poop in their water. Problem solved.

VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and environmentalists. They can be reached at LMurrayPhD@gmail.com.