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!
Day 2.
Day 3.
December seems to be the nesting season of the birds.
Day 4.
Day 5.
Day 6.
Day 7.
Slow builders, aren’t they?
Day 8.
The nest is nearly complete.
Day 10.
& then on the day I was getting bored of this… something appeared in the nest!
An egg!
Day 12.
Two days later…
3 eggs! The 2nd egg must have been laid on day 11!
Day 13.
No more eggs appeared & the birds started incubating their eggs.
Day 15.
Attempts to shoot them while in the nest failed as they flew away on approach.
Day 16.
& so I decided to use my tripod so that I could shoot them remotely. :)
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.
Day 19.
So I decided to shoot them from far using my camera at its maximum focal length.
That didn’t went well…
"Eggs take 12 days to hatch." – Wikipedia
Day 20.
Day 21.
Gotcha!
Day 22.
Christmas day.
Day 24.
& this morning….
Holy mother of…
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…
Sorry, that’s my best shot of a zozo condé! It’s one of the parents.
This. The Red-whiskered Bulbul. Images stolen from Wikipedia. You can find out more about them birds there.
Update:
Day 25.
This morning, when I woke up & checked the nest, it looked as if a storm had ravaged the plants…
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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