Chicks trying to survive...

this is one of the fluffbutts a day or so after leaving nest

DJ here. This is a slow day for me, may have gotten a bad grapefruit yesterday or something - do others get feeling surreal and a headache after eating a bad grapefruit? - rhetorical question, but it means bad sleep, and that in turn means low-productivity days. Fortunately, at age 69 nobody expects a US citizen to do much of anything useful anyhow, and that's without even counting in the fact that we're sequestered at home against a bat-plague. So here I am with a thousand-yard stare and no concentration for more than updating the bird blog.

There's currently a chick or chicks in the nesting box since yesterday morning. This is directly from the adult birds' behavior; they'll take soft insects to feed them to the yet-unseen chick or chicks, while swallowing tough chinese freezedried mealworms themselves. But the last nesting had no survivors, and that's in marked contrast to the first batch probably because we were providing a lot of live mealworms when the fluffbutts were hatching out, and ran out due to aforesaid plague-sequestration. So the last batch, dubbed the 'Cuties" by Susie, had no survivors. Maybe not enough rain to provide soft bugs. No idea whether these will fare likewise, but it hasn't been raining much.

Sue offering Birdlet some chinese worm soup, last batch of chicks

The adult birds have an instinct to confuse predators and competitors by flying in the wrong direction once they have chick food; typically they'll fly to the lower yard and act nonchalant while doing the shama equivalent of counting to ten slowly, and then will fly to the nesting box. They then repeat that on the way back. Not sure who they're fooling, probably other birds. Although the instinct seems to be stronger when carrying food to them than when returning for more food, because after awhile if I keep offering more they'll ultimately just say the heck with it on the way back. The male abandons the ruse first, and after not that many feedings; he knows that I know where the chicks are. Birdlet is a bit more circumspect and will do a huge circle without landing, flying to me by way of the lower yard, the great circle route like flying from London to Chicago by going over Greenland. But even she will ultimately just shuttle directly back and forth IF I have enough live mealworms, which as I've said, I don't at the moment.

Sue feeding birdlet, mid-flutter

We sacrificed some of Sue's mealworm beetles... you wouldn't think a beetle would count as soft food, but the parents seem to think so, and by the time they've pecked a beetle into goo it probably is digestible by a baby shama. If that was wrong, one would think that the instinct would have been lost. So they have taken a number of those up there, but a tiny amount compared to the volume a shama chick needs to grow from an egg to a flying bird. I have some mealworms on order, but the story on this batch of chicks will be determined before they get here, if they ever do get here. Our mailman doesn't appreciate it when mealworms get loose in his delivery van. We shall see.

No idea what to call them if they do survive, and it probably is bad luck to come up with a name beforehand... I suppose we could recycle "cuties" since that was never actually used for a batch of chicks, but it seems disrespectful to the last batch in a "lest we forget" way; if humans are paying attention it seems like attention should be paid at least in a blog. Feel free to comment suggesting names for future batches.

another Fluttering shot of Birdlet with Sue

Little Scruffy the bulbul has made himself a regular and his mother (?) has decided "the hell with it" and lands with him to take mealworms from me and stuff them into the kid's face, despite being generally skeptical of apes bearing gifts.

I had thought we'd seen the last of Tawny since he didn't show up all day yesterday, but he was in the kitchen again this morning clicking fretfully as his dad loomed outside the door and sang stories of his imminent ass-kicking. But Tawny tanked up pretty well before zooming out past his old man, so he's probably good for another 48 hours of adventures before making it back or succumbing to the fights he starts.

As I say, a slow day.