Lots of things happened today

Quite a lot happened today. I will try my best to write about them in this post before I lose focus and fell asleep.

In the morning, I was assigned to observe the nesting behaviours of this site. Strangely, the adult male left at 8:16 am and no parent had appeared for the rest of the day! What is going on!? There used to be three eggs in this nest. Then one egg hatched prematurely a couple of weeks ago- but the parents never threw it out. One offspring successfully this Saturday. And this morning (before 8 am), an assistant saw the parent took out one perfect egg.

If the parents don't show up tomorrow, we will resort to some ideas to try and rescue the newborn inside.


Even though it was quite boring staring at an eventless nest, I still found something interesting to photograph, such as this Telicota ohara formosana.

Another event that took place today was the TV station coming back to reshoot and capture some footages. This time, they wanted to shoot us mist netting the fledglings as they leave their nest for the first time and us processing and leg-banding them.

In the above site, three fledglings came out today and we successfully caught them all. Actually, the mist net captured the latter two. We arrived too late, and one had already flown out before we got there. Thankfully, we were able to hear its calls and locate it a few hours later.

This is Fledgling Number 3.

Last week, we caught our first two fledglings of the breeding season. Today, we had a terrible news as we found the father of the pair dead. We suspect it had hit a window in one of the greenhouses. It may had been dead yesterday as there were maggots on its body already (as seen in the last photo).

It was an excellent father as it provided most of the food for the pair after they left the nest. Rest in peace.

In the afternoon, I headed to the site and observed the now father-less pair. They kept calling but no father (or food) came. I hope they will be able to survive through this tragedy.

While observing the children, an adult barbet (not sure if it was the mother or someone else) was saw checking out their home on the dead Diospyros philippensis tree.

It is a very good tree to make a nest in.

Lastly, someone found an injured Common Magpie (Pica pica) inside the garden. We suspect it was either poisoned or fought with an Accipiter. Nevertheless, it was in a very weak state and we will try to nurse it back to health. Guess it is not such a lucky bird after all.

Much handsomer than the common crows, no?
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