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A paper on the species asks the important question “Does nest sanitation elicit egg rejection in an open-cup nesting cuckoo host rejecter?” ” To rephrase: if you put some trash into a nest of a bird along with a cuckoo egg, does that improve the chance that the cuckoo egg will be kicked out? How to find out?
One could have been just another cat-triggered tragedy ( keep your cats indoors ) turned into an unforgettable experience… My wife and I (retired) had a truly wonderful experience at the end of 2011 when our cat brought in a newly hatched Dikkop. We raised this little fella to a young adult. A very special experience!!
In this way, the cuckolding Cuckoo can convince its cuckoldee, the Reed Warbler, to back off when the Cuckoo comes around, allowing the Cuckoo to toss out one of the Warbler’s eggs and replace it with one of its own, to be raised by the hapless Warbler parents. However, Reed Warblers are social learners.
They are often raised by single mothers after their deadbeat dads disappear: Once the pair have mated, the female lays a clutch of three to six eggs and the male bird may abandon the female to take-up a new territory, in attempt to mate with additional females. You know what is interesting about Barred Warblers?
Among birds the Egyptian Vulture uses rocks to crack Ostrich eggs, the New Caledonian Crow and Woodpecker Finch (one of several Darwin Finches of the Galapagos Islands), uses sticks to extract grubs from inside a branch. Further support for inherent behavior comes from experiments. The use of tool by animals is surprisingly rare.
As a Northeast birder I am familiar with the alarming decrease in the number of Red Knots along Atlantic shores and have signed petitions and written e-mails calling for legislation and rules that will limit the overharvesting of the horseshoe crab, whose eggs Red Knots depend on. million in the late 1990’s. Should the gulls be controlled?
Being a westerner — raised in California, and now living in western Mexico — I was perhaps most excited about the migratory birds that breed in eastern North America. And then there was a Green Heron , not only showing us its nest, but also an egg. Then, around 4:00 p.m., And yet, there it was. But what could I do?
Scientific experiments would be needed to demonstrate true cause-and-effect, but the extra attention appeared to pay off. I didn’t get to witness such cooperation in the second year of the project, as only one egg hatched. I’m running a crowdfunding campaign now to raise funds to publish it.
The nearly two-week-old king chick is now weighing in at 30 ounces (882 grams) and currently being raised by its parents with routine check-ups from the SeaWorld Orlando Aviculture Team who monitor the chick’s weight and overall development. Although small now, it will grow to be more than 24 pounds (11 kilograms) and over 2.5
Once again Pied Oystercatcher breeding season is fast approaching in Broome and we can expect the first batch of eggs to be laid within the next few weeks. We have also discovered that they are very rarely successful with the first eggs laid due to predation of either the eggs or the chicks.
After mating, a single egg is laid and incubation duties are shared by both parents. The long shifts before swapping duties reduce the number of times that the birds have to run the gauntlet of the gulls and increase their chances of succesfully raising the chick to the age of abandonment.
The first eggs are usually laid at the end of May or sometimes in the first week of June, but this can vary depending on the weather. Both sexes incubate, with the eggs taking an average of 19 or 20 days to hatch. The clutch is two, sometimes three, with incubation usually not starting until the clutch is complete.
One Oriental Pratincole of them was courageously raising its wings when I unknowingly drove towards its eggs – I reversed, but I am not so sure about the next person using that road … Being yelled at by the chick of an Oriental Pratincole. The birding life.
It’s the warbler that is often the last unchecked species on birders’ life lists and, whether you list or not, for most of us observing it is a once in a lifetime experience. A nest wasn’t found until 1903, which set off a craze for Kirtland’s Warbler skins, nests, and eggs.
Of course, it is hard to resist looking at a paper titled “Host personality predicts cuckoo egg rejection in Daurian redstarts” Basically, the personality of a female redstart (bold or shy) predicts the responses to parasitic eggs – bold hosts are more likely to reject parasitic eggs. Not this one though.
I photographed this Guianan Cock-of-the-rock at a lek site near Surama, deep in the rainforest zone of Guyana, and my incredible experience with Andean Cock-of-the-rocks was at a display lek on the edge of the town of Jardin, in the coffee-belt of Colombia, both just incredible birds that make the heart soar with joy!
We are familiar with the story, birds flying north in the boreal summer, taking advantage of the warmth, long days, and abundant insect life, to raise their young. In my experience here, the Wheatear arrive at the end of May to early June and quickly establish territories. And for the most part it is.
I couldn’t help thinking this–me, the anthropomorphism hater– as I watched a pair of Philippine Eagles tend their nest, raise a chick, and tear monkeys apart in Bird of Prey: The Story of the Rarest Eagle on Earth , a well-crafted, beautifully filmed documentary with a mission. The Philippine Eagle has a kind face.
I once knew a guy who kept and raised cats. I new him because we enlisted his Dryfus Lion and one of his tigers to carry out experiments with bones (this is something archaeologists do). Have you ever seen the Dryfus Lion? The one that walks around Wall Street and somehow makes you want to invest in the stock market?
There were an estimated 13,000 breeding pairs and roosting birds in 2016; additional islands have been created to support the increasing population and a raised (17-feet) walkway with observation platforms allows birders and photographers to enjoy them. This was the High Island Experience, I was told. It was amazing.
I know from experience how accessible Dennis is, last year he helped me identify a damselfly I photographed in Costa Rica (Argia anceps, no common name). The Natural History section points out that Red-tailed Pennants hold their wings flat or slightly lowered, while the skimmers tend to raise their wings.
Raised in and around the West Texas steppe country where temperatures reached 100 degrees with regularity, he began life as the Dust Bowl and Great Depression converged. That summer of 1938, when he was ten years old, Cade read of two brothers, Frank and John Craighead, who wrote of their experiences with falcons in National Geographic.
In recent years, the prevalence of disease-causing bacteria in meat, poultry, and eggs has risen sharply, which is why health authorities insist that these products be carefully handled and thoroughly cooked, if they are used at all. There is no need for infants to be raised on cow's milk formulas. But what about prior to two years?
How do I know of their Gothic moods when they have hidden them so well in an egg-white shell of conformity? And I haven’t even started to write about ageing them … What are your experiences, and what is the colour of the claws on your local gull species? It is the claws that give them away, their black nail polish.
Storks, Ibises and Spoonbills of the World states that “disturbance by local people, tourists, and egg and zoo collectors has similarly reduced the colonies, and more protection is vital”. Such an intimate encounter with one of the world’s rarest birds was a memorable experience.
I’m sure many of you have had similar experiences. I’m wondering as I write if you are shaking your head, uneasy that all these FACTS will interfere with your love of observing owls, an experience that easily borders on the mystical for some of us. But what do we know beyond these commonly seen and heard behaviors?
I have written about the interesting sex life of these jacanas a few times already (short version: female mates with male, lays a bunch of eggs for him to incubate and raise the chicks, leaves him, finds another male, repeat). Once I am moderately successful, I often find such photos quite pleasing. but they do. See the sequence below.
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