Crowing at midnight

[rick]

My bantam lad has started crowing a lot more. Sensing the days are lengthening already I suppose. Trouble is, he's not waiting till the morning.
I think its when our neighbour behind turns on their bathroom light although there has also been a bright moon the past couple of nights so I've made a heavy curtain as an extra shade. Been meaning to do it for a while anyway as a bit of extra wind muff with things looking to get a lot more wintery.
I'm beginning to regret removing the back fence last year though it was mostly an ivy covered wreck and its better for sunlight in the day.
He's only got a little crow but in the middle of the night will get us into trouble!

 

[chrismahon]

Likely it is the neighbour Rick as we can sometimes start ours crowing by shinning a torch around the enclosure. As you said it may be the moonlight that is stopping the little chap settling down properly at night. Ours are starting at 4.00am at the moment and I think it has also something to do with the lengthening days. One of the cocks was particularly defensive yesterday when 'protecting' one of his hens having a dust bath- I know that look in his eye only too well and kept my distance!

 

[rick]

You must be quite a way ahead of us with the sunrise Chris - normally he is crowing at about 5:45 here.
The curtain seems to work last night. Only one night and he hasn’t been crowing in the middle of the night regularly so a bit early to tell. This is the first year of going into the spring with a cock in the coop and I am surprised how early on in the year the mating behaviour has got going, but then, looking around, quite a few wild birds are paring up too (saw two blackbirds this morning flitting around together.)

 

[chrismahon]

We get an extra 1 hour 22 minutes daylight at the Winter Solstice Rick, compared to Derby, which is the nearest major town to where we used to live. Because we are an hour ahead of the UK, but on roughly the same Longitude, all the extra time is in the evening. So they get up before 8.30am (depends on the weather) and are all settled down by 6.00pm at the moment. We also have a 180 degree horizon, so the effect in practice is considerably more daylight than we had before because we used to live in a valley and were surrounded by trees and hills. Down side is it can get very windy.

So quite why they start crowing at 4.00am I don't know, as there are no neighbours, no roads and no lights? Perhaps they start getting hungry after 10 hours in the coop?

 

[rick]

My guess is that he can see the blue light of dawn on the horizon (into the UV end of the spectrum) a long time before we can detect it. Its still completely dark (as far as I can tell) at the time Linden starts crowing - but they probably are feeling more than a little peckish after 14 hours on the perch