Since I'm going back to square one, I'll introduce "Bird" formally here. Of course if you've seen any of the recently-posted videos, you can tell that he now considers me part of the family, but there's a long story that goes with that, and it's kind of interesting, and I won't be telling it here and now. Just wanted to throw out a few pix of him for the blog.
He's a very pretty male shama, and was always the most skeptical of us humans. After a very long time he started to warm up to me and finally decided he and I were friends, to the point that I can be wandering the yard and call him down to talk even if he can tell I don't have any food. However, he continued to consider Susie a monster and gave her the full monster treatment, including razzing her and avoiding her, until just a couple months ago, and it has only been the last month or less when he'd land on her hand even for food.
He's strong, coordinated, treats his mate abominably, and instinctively attacks his own chicks once they've worn out their welcome. He even kills some of them, I think, though driving them away will in most cases accomplish the same thing. We try to be very aware of that, and the ins and outs of various generations of chicks we've gotten to know as individuals is where "ShamaDrama" gets its name. As much fun as it is for us to have them share our lives a bit, they're living a no-nonsense life & death foraging existence, and our providing of some extra food sends signals for the parents to reproduce, even though there is no actual increase in the shama carrying capacity outside our yard. This can be finessed a bit; I suggested to Cheepy that he claim a territory that no other shama would defend, and just get take-out food from us, and darned if he didn't do exactly that for as long as he could. But that's another story.
This is Bird, the patriarch. We live in his yard. He has fairly recently decided that's OK.
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