Sunday, April 10, 2011

Stewart is born!

     So on March 7, 2011, Stewart hatched out of his little egg.  He was so small and soo cute!! Many people disagreed with me and said he was creepy looking though haha.  This is my first time seeing a baby bird this small and it was amazing.  He was only about a little over an inch big!





     I picked him for for a quick picture and put him right back in with his mommy so she could take care of him.  It was hard not to bother them too much because he was so pink and wiggly!  Merry is a very good mommy, she took really good care of baby Stewart when he was a wee helpless chick.  It wasn't easy though since she was a single mom.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

My baby lovebird

     So this is about the life of my little one month old baby lovebird Stewart.  He hatched on March 7, 2011.  Before we get to his story, here's some background on his parents.

     His mother's name is Merry and we had caught her a few years back at my house and was living with my cockatiel Pippin which my uncle caught and gave to us.  On January 1, 2011, as I was changing the oil on my car, another lovebird was flying around and I managed to catch him and we named him Frodo.  We did DNA tests on both lovebirds because without it, there is no way of telling whether they are female and male.  To our delight, it came back showing Merry as a female and Frodo as a male so I went out and bought a nest box for them. 

     We weren't sure whether they would take to each other because they never got along with each other before that.  But soon after putting in the nestbox, it awakened breeding instincts in Merry and she decided Frodo was a good partner for her so they started courting.  On February 2, Merry laid her first egg!! We were so excited!!  Two days later, she laid another egg then she didn't lay the next egg till four days later and her fourth one three days after that and finally her last one two days after that.  Lovebirds have an incubation period of approximately 23 days so the first egg, if fertile, was supposed to hatch on the 25th of February.

     On February 18, something tragic happened, I did my usual changing out water and refilling of their food dish before I left for work.  Apparently, I had forgotten to latch the side door after I put the water dish in and Frodo discovered that it was unlocked and escaped! My sister called me during work and I was so sad and mad at myself for doing that.  I immediately went home after work to attempt to find him but no such luck.  So here we were, approximately one week away from est. hatch time of first baby and poor Merry is going to be a single mother.  We knew by then that only two out of the five eggs were fertile though by candling them.

    On the estimated hatch day, we were disappointed because nothing hatched but we were hoping that maybe it would hatch a day or two later though since they don't always hatch exactly on the 23rd day.  So, we kept waiting and waiting and 2nd and 3rd estimated hatch days passed with nothing happening.  Finally, on March 7, during the wee morning hours, baby Stewart hatched!! Omg, it was sooo cute! y coworker said it looked creepy but I thought it was cute.  And the second fertile egg never did hatch, for some reason, it died in its shell.

To be continued....