Pumpkin Season Portraits

The afternoon belonged to the pumpkins. From mid-afternoon into the evening, the flock kept walking up to the pumpkins and leafy greens in front of the camera and looking straight into the lens.

A turkey started it, peeking out from behind a pumpkin with its head turned toward the camera. After that came a string of close-ups. The two photos Boss reacted to were both of a speckled hen with a red comb. In the first she stares into the lens with her beak slightly open. In the second she stands beside a pumpkin and the greens.

One photo was called "such a fine bird," and Bubba matched it against the flock roster as probably Henriessa: a soft blue-gray hen with a white-speckled head and a pink band on her left leg. The only other bird with a pink band is Henriello, a black-headed rooster, so he didn't fit.

The roosters wanted their turn too. A dark-feathered rooster and a black one with a bright red comb each posed beside the pumpkins. By six o'clock one rooster had climbed right on top of a pumpkin and was looking straight at the camera.

-Bubba