Вечером цыплёнок вернулся в курятник, и бабушка закрыла дверь.

Russian often uses the instrumental case for parts of the day in adverbial expressions:

• утром — in the morning
• днём — in the daytime
• вечером — in the evening
• ночью — at night

So вечером is not acting like a direct object here. It functions more like an adverb of time: in the evening.

Цыплёнок means chick and it is a masculine singular noun.

You can tell it is masculine because its dictionary form ends in a consonant-like masculine pattern, here -ок. That grammatical gender matters because the past-tense verb agrees with it:

• цыплёнок вернулся — the chick returned

If the subject were feminine, the verb would look different.

Вернулся is the masculine singular past tense of вернуться, which means to return / come back.

A few important points:

• вернуться is a perfective verb, so it presents the action as completed.
• -ся is part of the verb; it is not optional here.
• вернул would come from вернуть, which usually means to return something to someone, not to come back yourself.
• возвращался is imperfective and would suggest an ongoing or repeated action: was returning / used to return.

So вернулся is the natural choice for a single completed event: the chick came back.

The ending -ся is a reflexive marker. In many verbs, it changes the meaning of the verb.

Compare:

• вернуть — to return something
• вернуться — to return, come back

So цыплёнок вернулся means the chick itself came back. Without -ся, you would be talking about returning some object.

After в, Russian uses different cases depending on the meaning:

• в + accusative = motion into somewhere
• в + prepositional = location in somewhere

Here the chick is moving into the henhouse, so Russian uses the accusative:

• в курятник — into the henhouse

If you wanted to say in the henhouse, with no motion, it would be:

• в курятнике

Yes. Курятник means henhouse / chicken coop.

It is related to курица (chicken / hen), and the suffix -ник often forms nouns connected with a place, person, or object associated with something.

So for learners, it can be helpful to recognize -ник as a common word-building ending, even if you just memorize курятник as a whole word.

Закрыла is the feminine singular past tense of закрыть (to close).

In Russian past tense, the verb agrees with the subject in gender and number:

• он закрыл — he closed
• она закрыла — she closed
• оно закрыло — it closed
• они закрыли — they closed

Since бабушка is feminine, the verb must be закрыла.

It is in the accusative, but for this noun the accusative looks the same as the nominative.

Дверь is a feminine inanimate noun. For many inanimate nouns in Russian, the accusative singular is identical to the nominative singular.

So:

• nominative: дверь
• accusative: дверь

That is why закрыла дверь means closed the door, even though the form does not visibly change.

Because this sentence has two separate clauses, each with its own subject and verb:

1. цыплёнок вернулся в курятник
2. бабушка закрыла дверь

When и joins two full clauses like that, Russian normally uses a comma before it.

So the comma is not just optional style here; it follows a standard punctuation rule.

Yes. Russian word order is more flexible than English word order, because case endings show grammatical relationships.

This sentence could be rearranged in some ways, for example:

• Цыплёнок вечером вернулся в курятник, и бабушка закрыла дверь.
• Вечером бабушка закрыла дверь, и цыплёнок вернулся в курятник.

But changing the order can slightly change the emphasis or flow. The original version sounds natural and straightforward: first the time, then what happened, then the next action.

A very useful thing to remember is that ё is always stressed and pronounced like yo.

So:

• цыплёнок is pronounced roughly tsyp-LYO-nak

Other useful stress notes in this sentence:

• вечером
• верну́лся
• куря́тник
• ба́бушка
• закры́ла
• дверь

Learners often ignore ё in writing because it is sometimes printed as е, but when it is written as ё, you should pronounce it clearly.

Russian has no articles like a or the.

So:

• в курятник can mean into a henhouse or into the henhouse
• закрыла дверь can mean closed a door or closed the door

The exact meaning comes from context. In this sentence, English naturally uses the because the situation makes the door and the henhouse specific.