11.27.06
Yin & Yang
Looking for pregnacy news? See the post Kicking ‘n Screaming.
My husband keeps taking pictures and saying “you can put this in your blog.” I keep telling him to write his own blog. But, to keep a happy marriage, I’m going to oblige him from time to time and post some of his pictures.
Today’s picture is titled Yin & Yang. Sorry. No commentary on the forces of water and fire or feminine and masculine in constant, balanced opposition. The quick story is that we put a plastic mason jar lid on the floor of the bird cage with seed in it for the little chicks. For some reason the chicks like to sleep in the lid on top of the seeds. Whatever. Normally, they slept with their heads in the same direction, but my husband happened to catch them in this position and managed to get a picture.
This picture is a few days old, and the chicks are no longer small enough to sleep in the lid, but they still try some times. The older chick is flying now and is almost a full fledged parakeet, though he still tries to get his dad to feed him. The younger chick has started flapping his wings wildly and climbing the ladder. He should be flying in a couple of days.
The sad part about the chicks growing up is that they no longer like to be held while hand-feed chunks of fruit. I’ve actually enjoyed holding and feeding them and had started to get attached. Now that they don’t want to be held any more and are almost grown, I’m afraid that I will no longer be interested in them. They will become adult parakeets with absolutely no interest in me other than as a source of bird seed. We will have had less then a month of bonding, so it could be fairly easy to give the two young ones away. Any takers?
Fortunately, human babies stay interested in their parents for at least 5 years, 10 if the parents are lucky. After that, their friends and personal life are more important. But those initial years of having all life revolve around family can supply the time to build the mutually desired bonds that tie families together for life. If I’m lucky, my future children will be the kind of people who enjoy spending time with family but also want to move out and have their own lives as adults.
11.12.06
Separation and Reunion
The baby birds are still growing and doing fine (pictures below). The parents, on the other hand, are having issues.
The bigger chick is 1 week old in this picture and has a full crop. As usual, it is covering the head of the 3-day-old chick to help keep it warm.
Here the chicks are 2-1/2 weeks and 2 weeks old. They look like turkies, but I think it’s just a phase.
We had separated the two adult male parakeets from the mom, Condor, and her babies because she was preventing the males from consuming any food. She was so distracted by protecting the food source that she would forget which little chick she had feed and would go back to feeding the larger one. The smaller, younger baby was being somewhat neglected, and my husband and I were worried, so we separated the adults.
Now the older bird is at the point that it needs to be feed by the father rather than the mother. Amazingly, in parakeets, the mother feeds the young for the first couple of weeks, then the father feeds them for the following two weeks until they can eat on their own. This is because the mother feeds the young a substance called “crop milk.” The father then feeds the young a less digested form of regurgitated food that he also feeds the mother while she is nesting.
So, today we moved Condor and the babies into the larger cage with the other males. We hoped that by moving her into their space, she would be less protective of the food and they would all be able support the young. All seemed fine at first. The adults all hung out at the top of the cage, and the babies, now large enough to keep themselves warm during the day, were in the nesting box at the bottom. About 10 minutes in, the father, R2-D2, started doing his duty and feed the larger, older baby. All fine right? Wrong.
Condor and R2-D2 started fighting over the rights to feed and protect the babies. Flapping wings, chasing each other around the cage, and pecking at each other. No one was hurt, but the fighting was intense. They have settled down now. Condor is nesting with the babies at night, but I’m sure there will continue to be incidents. We may have to separate them again, but for now, we will leave them reunited as a family. Perhaps this is just a typical internal family squabble like those that happen in any typical human family. I’ve always said that my immediate family (parents and siblings) is proportionately dysfunctional to any typical family, based on the number of family members. If this dysfunction carries over to bird flocks, then I’m sure the babies will be just fine.
11.07.06
Birds and Babies
When I meet my husband, he had three parakeets. I did the pet thing while growing up and in college. (In fact, I probably had more pets while in college than most people have during a life time. But the rattlesnake is a story for another day.) I don’t object to his birds, but I haven’t had much interest in them until now.
The female parakeet, which my husband named Condor before he new it was a girl, recently laid several eggs and managed to get two of them to hatch. This happened once a few months ago, but she was clueless and didn’t know how to take care of the one chick that hatched. It couldn’t survive without her care and died within 24 hours. This time, it seems her instincts have kicked in, and she is mothering her little chicks with a passion.
Last weekend, the behavioral biologist in me kicked in, and I’ve been spending a lot of time just watching the birds. The behavior of the entire group has changed. Condor has taken charge with a vengeance and is now protecting the food source from all competition. Translation: she doesn’t let the other two adult birds eat unless they manage to sneak a few bites while she is fussing over her babes. She is also doing an excellent job taking care of her chicks. You wouldn’t believe how distended a baby parakeets crop can get when its mother is stuffing it with regurgitated food–I’m guessing the crop gets more than twice as large as the chick’s head, which is so over-sized that the bird can’t even hold it up for the first two weeks.
Condor’s dominatrix personality has gotten so out of hand that we had to invest in a second cage tonight. The other two adults, R2-D2 and Turkey Bird (I had nothing to do with naming them), were slowly starving, so we needed to separate them. The new cage is bigger, and once the babes are big enough to fend for themselves, Condor will be moved into the larger cage with the other birds. My husband seems to think that we will keep the kids, but I’m hoping to find them a good home, somewhere else.
The comforting part of all of this is that God has instilled maternal instincts into all of His creations. I just hope that mine kick in in time for me to care for my first born. Gestation periods in humans are longer than the three-week hatching time for parakeets, and I tend to think the emotional costs of screwing up with the first child are also much greater. Then again, I’m not an oldest child, so I don’t know.
On second thought, maybe I am. If I consider my biological mother, she did kind of screw up and lost me–well, gave me up for adoption. I was probably her first child. Though I’ve fared exponentially better than Condor’s first hatchling, I hope my biological mother is doing as well as Condor with any other children she may have had.
Oh, and did I mention that I’m currently gestating? Here’s to hoping that I do okay with my first born!
