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Small Cabin Forum / Nature / The great Chickadee experiment
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groingo
Member
# Posted: 27 Apr 2016 11:51
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Little pair of Chickadee's decided to nest on an old outdoor porch lamp, as they kept trying to build the nest their grass kept sliding off down onto the ground, seeing the problem they were having I removed the hat from the lamp and inverted it, now it was more like a bowl, I put a handfull of their grass in it and returned the next morning to find that they had not only returned but rebuilt the nest completely with not a piece of grass out of place or on the ground.

Now comes the interesting part, next morning there was one egg then each day one more, but no sign of the parents so I took infrared temp readings of the eggs which showed them to be same temp as surrounding air, so I thought they may all just die due to lack of heat, then came day four, I went to the nest to check and a Chickadee flew out, there were now four eggs all at 91 degrees.

What I suspect is she wouldn't set on the eggs till she had laid them all, so all previous eggs (three) were intentionally kept cool to slow development so after the final egg was laid she would actually set on them and all would mature at the same time, theoretically they should all hatch at the same time or
very close to it....we'll see in about 30 days.

hattie
Member
# Posted: 27 Apr 2016 12:34
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That is really interesting! I bet you are right on with your thoughts of Mama slowing down the egg development by waiting until the final egg was laid to sit on them. Keep us posted on this! Can you get a picture of the nest?

It is amazing how intelligent animals are!

LDamm
Member
# Posted: 27 Apr 2016 13:58
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Yes, birds sit after the last egg is laid. That's how ducks can have 14 or more ducklings all out at the same time.

bldginsp
Member
# Posted: 27 Apr 2016 20:11
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I was walking one morning and saw out of the corner of my eye what seemed to be a large snake slithering through the bushes. I looked, and it was actually a momma duck and 15 little ones! They were dutifully following behind her in a long line as she waddled through the bushes. Now how's she gonna feed that many!

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