So the fecal sac consumption thing in the last post? did you notice how the baby bird actually wiggles his backside up in the air so that the fecal sac is easy to find? I find that fascinating.
Okay, I find it all fascinating. According to a research paper I found online, the babies have a hierarchical (sp?) place in the nest, and from hours of observing our nest, I think it's definitely true that the last hatched, the smallest one, is almost always on the right hand side of the screen. Apparently one of the birds makes sure that the largest/strongest gets fed, and the other one makes sure the runt gets fed, until someone decides the runt is a liability and pushes it out of the nest. Nothing of the sort has happened here yet, but A and I were pretty sure the runt wasn't getting fed today at all, and finally A stood up and announced she was going out digging worms. As she had somewhere else to be less than ten minutes from the time she decided this, she didn't go do it, but Teenie got fed several times tonight while I was watching. We are working on convincing the children that it is a good idea to let nature take its course, but we have yet to be successful.
I spent most of the evening "watching TV" with B, while TechnoBoy and A were out, and mostly that meant I had the webcam up on the laptop and I watched birds and listened to the TV.
This next pic is my favourite of the day.
Darien-the-commenter would like me to tell you that the big one out front is Jacques (and look how his (?) eye is starting to open!) and the other three are Gilles (get it? Jack and Jill? She's studying French right now ...) and Frank. The mother is Lucy (or Winnifred, if you're John-from-darien's-French-class) and the father is Guido.
The only reason I have stopped watching is that it is now dark outside.
2 comments:
Darien-the-commenter is very happy now :-) Go Teenie!
aww, maybe that explains the baby on our patio floor. I didn't know.
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