March time I noticed a marked difference in the birds with them almost begging us to clean out their nest boxes from last year and fit them back into their cages. I similarly begged Johan, telling him that as early as it was in the year, the birds were ready to breed. He blatantly ignored me and continued with anything to do with budgies and left the other poor birds to get on with it. Visiting Bakkies and Daleen at Easter time we happened to discuss this very matter one evening and I was quite hot under the collar about it as I was certain we had missed the window period to a good breeding season which would either have been over early or we could have had a bumper time with two or maybe even three rounds of chicks from each pair. Johan was quite non-commital to any thing, however Bakkies reckoned that 'we' were right to wait. He reckoned that by waiting the birds will breed better later in the year. So, okay, having another opinion made me feel slightly better about not doing anything positive at the time, but some months on now and I was beginning to feel that maybe Bakkies too had been wrong and we were in fact going to go a whole year, or season, without one chick from any of them.
It is by all accounts way too hot for the birds to be breeding now as we have gone from a cool winter - much cooler than the last few years anyway - to an extremely hot 'spring'. when I say hot, I am not exagerating....it is 29/30 degrees celcius every single day. To top it off, we have had winds that are blustery all day long and most days it is just plain unpleasant. So with it being as hot as it is, the birds should actually not even be considering breeding now - and yet they are. In the last few weeks I have noticed how they have been going into their nest boxes and when Johan was here earlier in the month, he had a peek and noticed that they almost all have either been into the nests and/or laid eggs.
Well most interesting for me are 3 pairs of Red Rumps which were given to Johan by Bakkies to try out. The first pair I don't think have been anywhere near the nest as it still looks as undisturbed inside as the day that I put sawdust in it. The second pair we had high hopes for as they were definitely going into the nest, but then sadly a bird of pray came and attacked the male through the wire and it died..... The third pair are what we pinned all our hopes on and we watched as the hen laid first one egg, then a second and a third right up to five eggs. With keen anticipation and much trepidation I have been keeping a watchful eye on these eggs and will you believe it when I tell you that two of the eggs hatched!!!! The chicks were the tiniest and fluffiest little things I've ever seen. The first chick only survived two days but the second one is growing bigger and stronger by the day. The other eggs haven't hatched, but that's okay. I will be happy if they manage to raise the one chick, then at least we know that there is hope for more in the years to come.
As for the other birds - well Olive, our ever faithful ringneck, laid five eggs and I know that she has chicks now. I'm not sure how many there are as she is viscious and mean to me, so I am waiting for Johan to come home so he can have a look. The African Greys are still sitting on eggs and hopefully they too will be hatching soon.....so I have been proven wrong, but I had to wonder if it was nature adjusting to a situation that wasn't helped by us not fitting the nest boxes? No, I don't think so, because if the birds were ready to breed when I thought they were, they would have laid eggs in the bottom of their cages, irrespective - and they didn't....
first pair of red rumps
cockatiel hen
second pair of red rumps before the male died
Olive and her partner
one of the African Grey pairs
cockatiel chicks
not a great photo but difficult to photograph in the nest - the red rumps' chick
the red rumps eating to feed their chick
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