Going public with NextDoor...?

DJ here. This is a short post since I've just shared this blog link with some NextDoor neighbors who have also been effusing about shamas. I hope you like what we've done so far... though we've barely scratched the surface in terms of the stories we could already tell, the photos and video, etc. Before this there have been like 5 people total who have seen this.

We have learned quite a bit about shama behavior generally, perhaps including some stuff others haven't noted; and certainly have found that there are a lot of very distinctive personalities among the birds.

a young "Hawky" of the Fluffbutts experimenting with baths

Susie says that she'll respond to any comments, and I will from time to time as well.

Nothing much new to report on the birds.... well, except that we haven't seen Tawny since the the last post so he may be off on a perilous stage of his life; he was/is the last of the "fluffbutts" to be around, the first fledging of 2020. The second fledging didn't produce viable chicks, and now the two "Cuties" are flying around and being fed by their parents, and within a week or so will be introduced to us by their parents. Within 6 weeks of that, their parents will disown them and we'll be their only friends, since they can't stand each other.

Oh, and I can confirm a total of two Cuties, which will initially go by the designations Cutie1 and Cutie2 until they develop personalities and hang around, which some do and some don't. Inasmuch as the parent birds continued going into the nesting box for some days, I think think there were either unhatched eggs or maybe a chick that failed to thrive So if the cats don't get them in their initial clumsy phase, they'll be up here soon.

The fact that their parents go all psycho on them at about age 6 weeks underscores the fact that while the main initial dynamic, and core motivation, of the human-bird friendship is based on food, that's not all there is to it. Because the young birds get not only food but security from their parent birds... only to have that abruptly discontinued about 6-8 weeks after they leave the nest, with the parents not only not feeding them but driving them away. So we go from being the weird aunt & uncle to the only dependable friends from their chickhood, and we see some of them for quite awhile, particularly if they decide to spend time indoors rather than going out to pick fights with mature shamas immediately. (Which seldom ends well).  So there's a security aspect to it too.

Hope you find it interesting. There is generally a time lag in terms of getting photos up, and a far longer time lag to get videos up, since we actually do have other stuff to do, and the process is a bit cumbersome. So the pix are often flashbacks... click them to see full resolution. (Well not FULL resolution, but the cropped-down size I uploaded).