02/17/2010: The pair is introduced to see each other the first time. The male is in bamboo cage and he can see his mate in her aviary.
02/27/2010: Introduce the male into the aviary.
From 02/27 to end of 03/2010: Both the male and female live happy together in the aviary. There is no aggression from the male toward the female. The male sings few times daily but not a courtship song. Both birds are seems not in the breeding mood probably due to too young (both birds are born last year season).
04/02/2010: Observed the female starts to carrying materials to build the nest (coconut fibers, dried bamboo leaves, small twigs, etc...)
04/09/2010: Saw broken egg laying inside the bathing container this morning. Don't really know what happens. Egg shell seems hard enough, not rubbery so I don't think it dues to soft shell issue. I took the egg york (still intact) and the egg shell out and put on the aviary floor to take a picture. Later in the day, Egg york and egg shell are disappear, presumable that either or both of the bird eat them. The female looks fine and acts normal. She is still sleeping outside tonight.
04/11/2010: The female spend almost an hour inside her nest, probably to lay egg. Hopefully she will start to incubate her eggs soon. This is what her nest looks like:
04/12/2010: Finally she is sleeping inside her nest! So expect eggs to hatch April 23th -24th. Hopefully eggs are fertilized.
04/25/2010: No sign of eggs hatched yet. If delay hatching in this season is due to outside temperature (based on the observation of other pair of shama who also had eggs around the same time) tomorrow, there should be sign of hatching from this pair. I'll keep my fingers crossed!
05/02/2010: After passed the 14th day mark, I'm sure that the egg(s) are infertile; however, I still let the female incubate her eggs(s) until either she gave up, discard the nest or the eggs(s), or until I take the egg(s) out (which I will probably do so in the next weekend). Hopefully next batch will have better result than this one.
05/13/2010: Did not have a chance to come in the aviary to take the bad eggs out, and did not see the bird discarded any eggs, so I don' know what's going on. However, few days ago, the female starts to rebuild her nest and today, she begins to sleep inside her nest again. Hopefully this time the eggs are fertilized.
05/25/2010: Saw a few pieces of empty egg shells on the floor of aviary today. Finally the lest than one year old male did his job and got fertilize egg(s). I don't know how many eggs the female laid this time but I know for sure that both the parents are proven breeder and able to produce chicks.
06/04/2010: Early morning of 06/03/2010 I discovered that one chick died on the floor and covered with common ants. This chick probably got throw away by the parents the day before in the afternoon. The reason of death is unknown. Unless this chick got some kind of disease/virus, my guess is that because of the nest is too small and I think there are total of 3 chicks inside the nest, this one might accident fall out of the nest or got kick out by its brother/sister.
In the pic below, you can see that ants almost eat the entire skin of the chick.
06/26/2010: Few chicks hatched probably since 06/25/2010, but this morning I discovered 2 chicks (looks like just one or two days old) died on the aviary floor. Don't know the reason why :( Seems that there is at least one chick survive.
07/07/2010: Two chicks left the nest.
07/10/2010: One chick died for unknown reason. The other one survive and healthy. Might be a female
07/24/2010: At least one chick hatched in this third clutch. Few days later, all 3 chicks are found death on the floor. I then remove the small finch nest to see if this small nest is the culprit of this madness :)
08/09/2010: The female choose one of the two wood box nest that is the same nest for other two shama pairs. She is incubating her eggs right now and should be hatching in the next few days.
08/13/2010: At least 2 eggs hatched today. Freaky, Friday the 13th! :)
No comments:
Post a Comment