Weekend Birding: Charlie is Actually ‘Charley’
A Rainy Christmas Bird Count
I had planned to post photos of last week’s Christmas Bird Count, an annual event where groups of bird watchers spend the day counting birds for Audubon. Unfortunately, it rained all day. It was an effort to find and identify birds with raindrops falling in our eyes, and impossible to take photos. In spite of the bad weather the day was a success. My group counted 28 species and 725 individual birds.
Charley is a Female
This has been a crazy week and I didn’t have an opportunity to write up an alternate Weekend Birding post so instead I have an update on Charley, the Lovebird I rescued a few weeks ago from a shelter.
I bought a few new toys and let the bird out of the cage a few times for a bathroom sink shower and some exercise. He was settling down nicely and the nipping of the fingers slowed down. Until a few days ago. And then I noticed some odd behavior.
The bird was shredding the paper on the bottom of the cage and building what could only be described as a nest. Yup, Charley is a hen. A hormonal, territorial bird. That explains some of the biting and why she doesn’t want me to touch the cage.
She hollowed out some space between the layers of newspaper on the cage floor and began stuffing it with strips of paper. She would stick the strips in her tail feathers and carry them back to the ‘nest’. I managed to get one photo it.
A quick google search on this activity confirmed that it is normal female Lovebird behavior. All new to me as previously I’ve only adopted male birds. Now I’m wondering if she’ll lay eggs.
Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Alyce at At Home With Books. Visit her blog to see more great photos or add your own.
© 2012 Under My Apple Tree. All rights reserved.
How pretty she is!!
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Beautiful colors! It’ll be interesting to see if she is nesting and will lay eggs soon.
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What a surprise! Thanks for sharing more about Charley…..
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Well this should be a fun adventure for you 😉
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She is so pretty! I love her coloring. It sounds like she enjoys nesting.
Rebecca @ The Key to the Gate
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What gorgeous colors she has! You are such a kind spirit for rescuing her.
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Bear With Me…Charley is lucky you rescued her♫ HappyMerryChristmasHoliday♥
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That would be so exciting if she laid eggs, although I guess you would have needed a male bird too for that to really go anywhere…. 🙂 She is a beautiful bird!
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We have friends who have a female bird and she does indeed lay eggs. They let her keep them for a little while before they get rid of them.
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They teach you so much, don’t they? Thanks for passing along the pretty pics.Here’s Mine
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She is such a pretty bird. Let us know if she does lay eggs. Merry Christmas.
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Gorgeous colors. I love the way she carries her nest material — I had no idea that birds did that.
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Charley is so pretty! I love her vibrant colors.
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She is a gorgeous girl.
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Isn’t that intriguing behaviour? How clever of her to carry the paper in her tail! I’ve never seen anything quite like that. Sorry your count day was washed out.
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Very interesting. Good Luck with Charley.
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What a beautiful lady!
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Wouldn’t that be funny, you could have eggs for Christmas!
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Wow! You could be a grandmother in record time!
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