Hen Chronicles: The nasty weather makes way for spring

After two days of raw, windy, rainy weather that bore no resemblance to spring as it should be, today dawned calm and sunny here in central Maine, with the promise of similar gifts in the days ahead.

Our hens took notice.

Snow, Nellie and Hope raced out of the coop at dawn with an extra spring in their step, and quickly dug into their breakfast while I cleaned the coop. Later, as I went about the business of folding and removing the large tarp that has covered their pen since Saturday night, "the girls" all gathered at the front of the pen and watched attentively as daylight flooded in.

Nellie then returned to the coop and planted herself in the nest box, presumably to go about the business of laying an egg. Hope staged a triumphal walk around the pen. And Snow, the oldest of the hens, sat herself down and quietly gazed off to the east, as the sun embraced her world.

The experts say that chickens, like other birds, have better eyesight than we do, that they can even see colors which are beyond our imagining. That must have made for an especially glorious sunrise.