Serama chick and his father

This young cockerel has been re-home to one of my friend house up North.  Hope he will turn out to be a great and handsome rooster.

  This is the father, my current only rooster:

Intervention: Hand-rearing white-rumped shama chick

I noticed since yesterday afternoon that one of the young pair (both parents are less than one year old) stop feeding their chick (I know only one chick hatched on their first ever attempted to breed).  For the entire this morning, I observed that the male is more interest in trying to copulate with the female, while the female is not ready yet and she did not interest to fly to the nest any more.  Since early in the morning, there was only one waste deposit by the chick, this also indicated that the chick has not been feed for a while.  By late noon, early afternoon, the chick called almost non-stop and knowing it's hungry, I have no choice of enter the aviary and hand rearing the lone chick.  This chick is about 8 days and eyes are already open.  Hope I have enough time to take care it as working and family time might prevent me to take care of this chick properly.
As for the cause of why the parents are abandon their chick, I would assume that this is the first ever breeding for them and lack of experiences, and eagerness of the male trying to breed again are main contributed factor in this case.

Male white-rumped shama

Troupial (Icterus icterus) pairs begin to build nest

I have the pair of Troupial (Icterus icterus) since last summer and up until now, they still shy when I come near their aviary.  Few days ago, I noticed that both the male and female start to tear off bit and pieces of leaves and hold in their beaks pieces of small branches, feathers, etc.  so I put some long grasses, bit of vine, small branches, coconut fibers, dried bamboo leaves, etc.  Hopefully after they finish building the nest, they will lay some eggs.  I'm so excited!

The female with pink band on top of the nest. The pair below with the male in blue band

Tiny Serama egg

One of my Serama hen laid a tiny egg yesterday.  It would be interesting if this egg develop and hatch, but I doubt it will.  The other two eggs are normal size egg of Serama hen.

First shama thrush chick of the 2011 season

Only one chick hatched and left the nest yesterday.  All other eggs are non-fertile.  This one looks like a male to me.  Maybe better luck on the next clutch (fingers crossed).

 

Update 05/16/11: Both long tail pair and their children pair had some eggs hatched on Sunday 05/15/11.  Not sure how many eggs hatched but I'm sure there are at least one in each nest.

Canary

I adopt a male white canary last month.  He sings very well and I love him.  Because the shama thrush breeding season is late this year, I decide to get him a mate.  There are few nest inside the aviary (used to breed shama thrush), but the female canary choose the food cup instead.  Five days of incubation and hope to have some canary chicks soon :)

Finally I have shama baby(ies)

First clutch got abandon by the mother due to heavy traffic around the aviary during the first few days of incubation.  First egg of second clutch hatched today morning.  Hopefully there will be few more hatch in the next two days.  One other shama pair should have babies mid-week next week.  Yay, so happy!

Update:  04/22/11:  It seems that there is only one egg hatched in this clutch.  It's a sad thing but I'm still happy.  Maybe next clutch will be better, finger cross! :)

Audio of white-runped shama(s) sing in early morning :)

Below is the audio file (approx. 10min long) of shama birds sing their songs in early morning in my backyard.  This is what I have to endure every morning in Spring/Summer time beginning when the sun starts to rise :))  They sings almost non-stop for about an hour, and throughout the day.  Enjoys! :))