Pink, the 16-mo Maremma, our excellent livestock guardian (LGD) in training, works very hard warning away the coyotes, roaming dogs, deer, wild turkeys, and even vultures and hawks from our pastures. (Not that the turkeys would do any harm, but it doesn’t hurt to be thorough.) She has great instincts, great lungs, and a lot of enthusiasm for her job.
Two days ago, while gardening, I heard an awful sound by the front gate, and was afraid a cat had gotten caught between two rocks that slipped and trapped her. Heart pounding, I ran up to rescue her, only to find a blue peacock hen in our greenbelt outside the fence, craning her neck to peer in, checking out the place.
Then I remember the calls of the male peacock who used to scream like someone being disemboweled under my bedroom window in the middle of the night, years ago in Winter Park, but this was quieter, and not nearly as scary. Both cats came up behind me to investigate. Yep, that was the peahen.
Yesterday, the same pretty peahen appeared on the other end of the farm, in the small north pasture nearest the house. Pink barked like crazy. Like the clueless human I can be, I wondered what was so upsetting about this stately bird walking slowly in a pasture that did not even have any sheep to be protected.
Pink kept barking. When I yelled at her to stop, she looked at me like “are you nuts?” and barked even louder. She sounded pretty serious. What on earth?
I watched her watching the bird intently and finally got it. Pink thought it was a dreaded TECHNICOLOR VULTURE. What if it was worse than the black and white version? Who knows what ghastly harm a bird like that could do? Kelly taught Pink that vultures are a Terrible Thing. Pink was taking no chances.
This morning, when we left the house, the hen was back, and she had her green buddy with her, another peahen. Pretty girls, and pretty hungry. I set out dishes of chicken feed and black sunflower seeds for them, and the girls ate well. Except when Barbara the blue Manx cat came along and stole some chicken feed.
Few of our visitors are so elegant. Have you ever seen such pretty vultures?
silkhopefarm 
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