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| Eepy2, the slightly smaller male chick |
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| Eepy1, the larger of two male chicks |
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| Eepy2, just starting to get a black front |
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| Another of Eepy2, you can see his black chest feathers filling in |
So it took us awhile to realize that Birdlet was a female. The thing which did it was that she started flying off with the mealworms rather than gulping them down. Not being entirely clueless, I figured out that she must be female, Bird must be her mate, and that she must have hatched one or more chicks.
Figuring out where the nest was, was pretty straightforward… just watch where she flies to. Except… if shamas don’t trust you much, they take circuitous routes to their chicks, so you have to keep your eyes on them through all sorts of diversions. This is possible, though. (and these days, unnecessary, as the parents don’t mind much if we know where the nest is). But it turned out that of all places she’d build a nest in a hanging piece of heleconia about a food outside our fence line. Seemingly a terrible place to have chicks, and in fact it was in the path of machete-wielding flower choppers, and I located the nest barely in time to intercede with them to not chop it all down… literally a matter of hours. The birds didn’t know or appreciate this at the time, but it meant that we had intervened and that whatever happened with the chicks would be somewhat “on us”.
Finally they left the nest, and they’re pretty hard to spot, but by the pattern of Birdlet’s flying (Bird didn’t seem to be feeding them much if at all), it seemed there were three of them. After a day or so I got a view of two of them and a few photos, which was interesting because I hadn’t checked on what shama chicks were supposed to look like, and I was struck by the coloration.
After a few days, the one chick which was off our property apparently failed to thrive, was eaten by a cat, or came to grief in some other way since the parents stopped going over there and instead focused on the two chicks which were hanging out inside our fence mostly in the lower yard. I named them Eepy1 and Eepy2, collectively the Eepies, because why not? At that point it didn’t occur to us there would be multiple batches in the same year. hah.
Initially it took a fair bit of stalking to check on them, but since I was supplying some food - live mealworms - to their mom, the focused on her. They really liked the live mealworms. And each chick wanted to be the closest to Mom because the closest and most assertive chick got more worms. This established a dynamic which would hopscotch them ever-closer to where I was handing out the worms.
This cause Bird to go absolutely nuts. He already felt I was a monster, and said so constantly, and now his chicks were approaching me ever-closer. As this happened, Birdlet would give a monster call at me as well, but quickly decided that I was more of a plus than a minus in the equation, that my worm-giving quality outweighed my scary-monster quality. So soon the Eepies were coming nearer, and rather than staying quiet and motionless I decided to be animated, loud, and intrusive to get them used to it. This of course made Bird go even more nuts, but Birdlet who was doing the feeding just decided that was what I did and it was harmless. So the Eepies learned that their mom considered me harmless, their dad thought I was dangerous, but that when they were nearby me they got more and better food. This was a pretty simple heuristic on their part… baby birds are all about the food. So after a few days they’d be so close that they and their mom would be standing on the same concrete step I was sitting on, with me handing them to her and her simply pivoting to shove the worms into their gullets. Another day or so and they were taking mealworms directly from me. And so on. Once they decided I was the third “feeder” in their lives, that became a pretty durable thing in their pointy little heads. As they got older, they learned that they didn’t have to wait for mom, they could find me on their own and ask for worms.
I should note that at that point I wasn’t giving away enough worms to constitute the bulk of their diet, just to augment it. Live mealworms were pricey. They were probably one of the highest-food-value things the birds were finding though.
So as the Eepies grew up, they became hand-trained and would come visit and stuff, even while their dad continued doing the monster calls at me. The two chicks would be sitting on the fence next to me and their dad would fly up and razz me and then fly away, and then do it again and again, trying to communicate to the chicks that they were in danger, and they entirely ignored him. As did his mate, who would also sit there taking mealworms from me.
There are a number of videos of the Eepies, enough that they won’t all be linked at this site, but I've thrown one in, above. (As always, click full screen for it to look like anything. This was my first experience with hand-training a chick, so there's a lot of baby talk; I intentionally make a lot of noise and movements to get them used to it, not to mention a large camera held about 6" away). This video is Eepy2 on a rainy day in Maunawili.
They hung out until Birdlet hatched the NEXT brood, more sensibly laying her eggs in a hollow in the neighbor’s avocado tree, and that’s where the Peepies entered the story and the Eepies were driven away by their very aggressive dad. We didn’t really expect that, having not read up all that much on shamas, and his level of violence in getting rid of them kinda surprised us. Surprised them, too. At the point young shamas are being displaced by another brood, both of their parents not only shun them but actively chase them away, peck them, etc. This meant that Sue and I became the only “parents” that were still acting marginally sane, so if anything the chicks are more attracted to us at that point.
So the Eepies went out into the world, with the odds against them, and we know not what became of them. Nor did we immediately realize there would be FOUR batches of chicks in 2019 in our yard from Bird and Birdlet. That brings us to the Peepies, which will be mentioned next…
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