Chickens seem to operate on the principle that, if you have wings, you might as well use them occasionally, if only to remind yourself that you’re really a bird.
It’s a sad fact of life for hens, but a bit of good luck for their owners, that chickens cannot fly very far, very well or very long. So they don’t waste a lot of time trying. On those rare occasions when we have to chase escapees in our city yard to keep them away from the street, they spend all of their time darting to and fro, without ever taking wing.
“The girls” do exercise their wings while in their pen, often when they first emerge from the coop in the morning. It reminds me somewhat of humans stretching when we get up. They also use their wings as stabilizers if the ramp leading down from the coop is slippery or wet, like we do by spreading our arms while walking on ice, or on a narrow log. Unlike a feckless human headed for an inevitable fall, a chicken that loses its balance will successfully flap its wings to right itself.
The most entertaining example of winging it that I’ve seen occurs when Snow, our Plymouth Rock, goes into the coop from the pen.
The elevated coop is about a foot higher than the pen. The hens can walk up the ramp connecting the two, which they do. Ot they can hop directly from the ground into the coop, which they also do. But Snow, our Plymouth Rock, likes to mix things up a bit. Her patented two-step technique begins with a halfhearted hop that propels her a few inches into the air and concludes with a flapping of wings to get just enough additional lift to finish the job.
It’s nowhere near as impressive as an eagle soaring over its domain, but it does require perfect timing and coordination. If you’re a chicken, you work with what you’ve got. Which, limited as it may be in the flight department, still allows you to look down your beak at the penguin, the ostrich and the emu.
