Monthly Archives: May 2018

Nest one chick growing fast.

“Chickens” Hatched

May 29th 2018

“Don’t count your chickens before they are hatched”, the old saying goes. And so it was with our thirteen fertile chough eggs. Most of our eggs did hatch – sadly, some did not survive.

For reasons known only to the choughs themselves, the eggs in nests three and five were taken out by the parent birds. We checked the CCTV. Nothing unusual. No disturbance. Very odd. (Nest five had an evening feed as normal, and the female simply never got back on the eggs).

However, we now have eight chough chicks, in various family groups at various stages of growth. Nest number one has three chicks, hatched on May 10th and 12th. All are growing well, and rapidly destroying the nest as they do so.

One chick was noticed to be breathing heavily and “crackling” – a clear indication of gapeworm infection. As a precaution we pulled all three chicks from the nest and dosed them with specific amounts of Ivomectin. All are now back to full vigour.

Nest one chick growing fast.

Nest number one chick growing fast. (Get a bigger dish) Pic R Hales.

Nest number four has a single chick hatched on May 14th. Sadly the other two eggs in this nest did hatch, but the chicks died as they emerged.

Nest number two has become our favourite – producing four chicks at the first attempt. Three hatched on May 17th, and the last kept us guessing until May 19th. Our main concern was for this final chick, who was obviously going to be the last to get to any feeds.

Four lovely chough chicks in nest two.

Four lovely chough chicks in nest two.

Each day, we would take the chicks out to monitor growth, and each day we would favour chick number four with supplementary feeds. It has now caught up with it’s siblings.

The parent birds on nest number two, are proving to be very capable. Both birds attend the youngsters, and both take turns feeding and taking out the faecal sacs.

One delightful surprise, is that the female likes to have a wash and brush-up in the afternoons. We have noticed her coming in to the nest freshly washed on several occasions. This may not just be vanity, it may be that she is actually cooling the youngsters as they are all crammed in the nest together, they may possibly be getting to hot.

 

All five females sitting tight on their clutches of eggs.

Counting our “Chickens”

May 8th 2018

“Don’t count your chickens before they are hatched”, the old saying goes. Today was our day to do just that. With choughs.

The first of the five clutches is due to hatch at the weekend. The weather is now much better, and generally warming up, so it was time to see how many of our thirteen eggs are likely to hatch.

All five females sitting tight on their clutches of eggs.

All five females sitting tight on their clutches of eggs.

This is a fairly simple procedure, using the light from a mobile phone to “candle” the eggs. Ali goes in to each aviary, to add food and generally rummage about in order to distract the adult choughs. I then open the inspection hatches, hand the eggs to keeper Becky Waite, and she checks to see if they are fertile. (I have passed this job over, due to my remarkable inability to notice fully formed chicks inside the eggs).

The birds had been late getting into the aviaries. The weather has been horrible, both before and after the birds have been installed. Winter was nasty, and spring has been wet.

As previously posted, two of our pairs are now quite old, and were infertile last year. We were not expecting great things.

But great things occurred – all thirteen eggs are fertile. This includes two eggs from a female who is twenty years old!

A good day at work.