Day Three and Still Four

The male (see the dark head?) waiting for the female to return with breakfast. This morning's video. I was lying in bed this morning thinking really, what else is there to video for this blog? They're babies, they eat, the parents eat. Well, at least people can see how they're getting bigger. And then there was this morning, and The Battle. (note the parental abuse. Hair pulling, even!)(also please note that if the video window is black on your screen, it still plays if you click on it - at least it does on mine.)


Also of possible interest - this is a two minute video, and I missed several seconds of the battle taking pictures of it. I'm pretty sure it's Teenie who finally got the worm. As I was typing up this post, the male came back with another folded up worm and dropped it straight into Jacques' mouth, but Jacques dropped it and so Gilles or Frank got it. Based on the small size of the fecal sac that Gilles immediately produced, I'd say Gilles was due for food, although that may just be me trying to see equity and fairness in the cruel cruel world :)

Last thing I have to say about fecal sacs, I promise - they eliminate immediately after they've eaten. I find that ...say it with me ...fascinating. Also convenient, and wow, do I wish *I* worked like that.

You see why this has its own blog ...

I can't stop spouting nature facts at people. People at work are starting to get very. very. busy. when they see me coming.

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.

Videos

So I'm just going to post 2 short videos, both from feeding sessions. One of them may contain some fecal sac consumption :) and the other one is the best video, so far, of all four of them begging for food at the same time. A says it's like they're calling "Moooooooooooooooooooommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!"

There may or may not be a video in this post ...

All 4 are still alive. Earlier this morning I managed to shoot a video of all four of them trying to eat, but I can't figure out how to get that off the software and onto this page, so I used a different application to video them a bit later. By then, 2 of the 4 were sleeping, tummies stuffed, so this is what I got:

Which brings us to yesterday!

I peeked at the cam first thing in the morning. The "eggs" were pink, and wiggly. Well, three of them. If you know what you're looking at, there are three bare heads visible here.



By evening, all the eggs were hatched, and the feeding began. I could watch this all night. I almost did. Both parents are involved in the feeding - the male has a much darker head. The eggshells were apparently eaten for their mineral content, as are the "fecal sacs", which I have just been calling "poop". Apparently much of what is passed at this point is undigested food, and it is one way the parents get nourishment in between foraging for the young. Here are some shots I took last night with the webcam - excuse the focus problems, I'm not the camera buff, I'm the LOOK! Nature! Right THERE! buff. Well we all are, and the webcam is autofocus, so if it chooses to focus on one twig at the back of the nest, I don't know how to argue with it.



Above: one baby, looking like an alien.



Above: the hungriest one, on this trip



Above: the two hungriest ones, on this trip

It's just so fascinating. They raise those heads on their wet noodle necks and collapse all over each other and then, after the eating of the poop and the fussing about, the mama sits on them. Sometimes she stands up and stares at them, which cracks me right up. It's like she's acting on instinct most of the time, but every once in a while, a few more brain cells fire up and she just has to stare at them in wonder. Sometimes she leaves them for as long as 15 minutes, which makes me want to go hang up a sign saying "No hawks allowed!"



That's what happens when the papa comes while the mama is still there. Or when the mama decides she's had enough of that clicking sound coming from that black and silver thing.

the next 12 days

Looked a lot like this:



With some of this thrown in:



Google-the-scientist tells me that she does this to keep them evenly warming, and also to keep the developing embryo from sticking to the egg. Google also told me about the brood patch, which some birds develop during nesting season, in which they end up with a bare patch on their stomach that is hidden by feathers when flying, but can be bared so that the warm bare skin can be in direct contact with the eggs. In the above picture, you can see some of her feathers sticking out past her wing - I assume these are the feathers she can move aside in order to bare her brood patch.

Where's the papa, you ask?

Beaking us off every time we try to use our own deck.



He was never very far away, and he was the most vocal if she was startled off her nest. The dog got to the point where she would hear him beaking off and start barking at him from inside the house. She's used to him now, though, or maybe he's used to her.

Let the egg-laying begin

We noticed the first eggs on May 15. By the end of the next day, the nest looked like this:

Where it began ...

Sometime halfway through May, let's say the 14th, I realized there had been a lot of birdie flying back and forth across the window that overlooks our deck.

I took a peek and sure enough, there was much industrious nest building going on.

"Cool", said A. "Let's put up a webcam."

I mentionned the nest to TechnoBoy.

"Cool!!" he said.

"A wants a webcam."

And so she got one.