Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Hatchlings

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Day 1.

On the 4th of December 2011, a clump of straws appeared in a plant next to my window. From past experience, I knew that this was in fact a nest being built.
The last time this happened on my Christmas tree, the birds laid their eggs but then abandoned the nest. This time, I was determined to not let this happen & so all the neighbour’s cats were chased off & no tampering was done with the nest!

 

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Day 2.

 

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Day 3.
December seems to be the nesting season of the birds.

 

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Day 4.

 

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Day 5.

 

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Day 6.

 

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Day 7.
Slow builders, aren’t they?

 

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Day 8.
The nest is nearly complete.

 

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Day 10.
& then on the day I was getting bored of this… something appeared in the nest!

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An egg!

 

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Day 12.
Two days later…

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3 eggs! The 2nd egg must have been laid on day 11!

 

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Day 13.

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No more eggs appeared & the birds started incubating their eggs.

 

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Day 15.
Attempts to shoot them while in the nest failed as they flew away on approach.

 

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Day 16.
& so I decided to use my tripod so that I could shoot them remotely. :)

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Unfortunately, that didn’t work. The birds hated my tripod & all I managed to shoot was the above photo.
My camera doesn’t have any remote shutter option, so I was using my N9, triggering the camera via VNC.

 

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Day 19.
So I decided to shoot them from far using my camera at its maximum focal length.

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That didn’t went well…

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"Eggs take 12 days to hatch." – Wikipedia

 

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Day 20.

 

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Day 21.
Gotcha!

 

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Day 22.
Christmas day.

 

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Day 24.
& this morning….

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Holy mother of…

 

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Hatchlings! Wow, they are so tiny!

 

Oh, they don’t tweet yet… I mean the real tweet, not the 140-character one. :)
& that means that the day counter must now be reset. It’ll be a long wait before these hatchlings turn into one of these…

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Sorry, that’s my best shot of a zozo condé! It’s one of the parents.

 

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This. The Red-whiskered Bulbul. Images stolen from Wikipedia. You can find out more about them birds there.

 

 

Update:

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Day 25.
This morning, when I woke up & checked the nest, it looked as if a storm had ravaged the plants…

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Upon closer inspection, I found that the hatchlings were gone, totally disappeared. The forensic evidence all seems to suggest that they’ve been eaten by a very agile cat or more likely a bigger bird, the Myna. :(

So this post is dedicated to the three hatchlings who lived for only a day, who didn’t tweet, but still became famous on the Internet…

PS. First there was the slashed cat which eventually died. Remember the new-born kittens? Those 3 also died after their mother abandoned them. Now these new-born birds have also died. I’m starting to think that my blog might perhaps be some kind of Death Note

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