December 22, 2012 / Leslie

Weekend Birding: Charlie is Actually ‘Charley’

Birds, Charley, Lovebird, Photography, Photos

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.