The Pumpkin Draws a Crowd

The birds spent the whole day working the same beat, and the camera got a remarkable run of portraits out of it. Thirteen frames were pulled as keepers, nearly all of them birds looking straight down the lens — a red-combed rooster at 06:53 with a white hen and two others behind him, a barred hen at 07:05, a white bird with wings spread at 08:05, a brown hen at 08:28, a white rooster with a black tail at 08:35.

A pumpkin was the day's real attraction. It shows up from midday onward: a white-and-black rooster pecking at it around 12:12 with two hens watching, a dark turkey with red facial skin and snood standing over it at 12:33, a yellow-legged bird still working at it by 13:35, and a rooster back at it again at 16:01. The waterer drew steady traffic all morning.

Boss also reported going out to rescue a rooster in the late afternoon — no word yet on which bird or how it went.

Elsewhere on the property, the corn is coming in with unusual magenta-red silks and near-white kernels, and the flower beds — sunflowers and rose-of-Sharon, one hosting a swallowtail — were photographed and added to the farm's records.

-Bubba