Who is smarter, humans or chickens?

I'm thrilled to report that the ladies have put themselves to bed TWO nights in a row! Such a relief that they are behaving like proper chickens!

I don't know who deserves the credit though...

• Me, for ditching the ramp in favor of a perch and platform along the front of the henhouse (and the husband for building it), thereby successfully suckering the chickens into toeing the line, or 
• The chickens for refusing the to use the ramp, thereby successfully suckering us into providing them with something more fun (since they do love to perch).

Sunday night, I could hardly believe my eyes when I peeked out the window around 9:30 and saw the telltale shadows that meant four feathery ladies were up on the high perch in the henhouse (the shadows are from the heat lamp, which we've been turning on at night since the temps dropped back down into the upper 40s...barely OK for tomatoes, possibly not OK for smallish, adolescent chickens).

In other bedtime news, I've noticed that the ladies are at their noisiest for about 10-15 minutes before they finally settle down for the night. I mean REALLY noisy. Just a flurry of peeping, pseudo-clucking and trilling. They only time they are noisier is when you are foolish enough to walk past the coop with a LARGE, SCARY OBJECT!!! [Sigh.] I need to find out if this is a common phenomena...