Dear Tweeters,
Today my four-year-old grandson was at the dining-room window. I was doing dishes. He called out, "Hey, look, a baby chickee!" 

>From the kitchen sink, I replied, "Oh, that's probably just another House Finch, hanging out with the hens."

"No, Gramps, it's a baby chickee!" 
"Okay, maybe it's a Collared Dove, hanging out with the hens."
"NO, Gramps, it's a BABY CHICKEE!"

"Okay, I'll go check." 
Aaaaand--he was right! After all these years of roosters firing blanks, hens brooding eggs that never hatch, and so forth, here's one of my Black Australorps, tending to a tiny piebald chick! 
In other Phasianid (?) news, the two of us had taken a walk earlier (the fifteenth of September) at Nichols Bar, near Lyman, Skagit County. I was astounded to hear a Ruffed Grouse drumming! I don't believe I'd ever encountered the "autumnal recrudescence of the amatory urge" in a gallinaceous bird before!
Yours truly,
Gary Bletsch
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