A fowl situation!

The early morning chill when I was walking the dog today varied by only a few degrees from the morning temperature where my family lives in Scotland. However, the top temperatures forecast for these two locations were much more different: six degrees and snow in central Scotland, nineteen degrees and sunny here in southern Spain. Although the mornings and evenings have been decidedly chilly here,  and it's been a blessing to have a roaring fire in the lounge, we've been having beautiful sunny afternoons over the past week - a definite improvement on the cold rainy days that we were having this time last year.
I'm enjoying my early morning and late evening walks with the dog (to see me with my coat on and my hood up, you'd never imagine that it was the same day that had been so sunny), and the cat seems to enjoy sitting with us by the fireside in the evenings.... but I need to confess that I've been a hopeless failure as a chicken farmer. Every morning when I get up, the hens are relaxing around the swimming pool, eating the grass and pooping everywhere. How they get up there is a mystery, as the gate to the "farmyard" part of the property is always closed. (I even tied it closed with a rope!) In a spectacle worthy of "Funniest Home Videos," I round them up to the best of my ability and try to enlist the dog's help in herding them back down to the area where I give them their food and water. But there they are, every morning, having a hen party, hanging out at the pool and making a mess - like a bunch of delinquent tourists! They must be either jumping or flying over the fence, but I haven't caught them in the act yet, so it remains somewhat of a mystery. I need to have a serious "poop scoop" session every day, and in my darker moments I'm tempted to make a slight change of spelling in the title of an Agatha Christie novel: Murder most Fowl.