JUmpy Birdies!

....I was looking through the emails of the past hour to see if anything had happened in box #2. It is really hot and I was wondering how the birdies are coping....and then I almost fell off my chair....



I could only see 4 birdies!!!!

I thought: time to eat, forget eating, drive home!...No it cannot be, they are just JUmpy and are flying around in the box and looking out a bit, nothing more....BUT I can see only 4?!!!!???!!!

Okay, be patient, wait 2 more minutes, I thought...ahhh...



5 tails...I am counting tails now.

Indeed the last few days before departure the birdies in box #1 were really JUmpY.

I am expecting them to fly out on Sunday the latest. I hope they do not fly out before Saturday morning! Also, I do not expect them all to fly out at the same time. As posted previously 1 of the 5 is a bit behind development-wise and I think it will need a full extra day.

ooooohhhhh!

Spectrograms...

Some of you may recall that I looked into the frequencies of the Great Tit, Blue Tit and of the Eurasian Tree Sparrow. Here below is the spectrogram of the Eurasian Tree Sparrow (click to enlarge!)...



The upper image shows the wave form. The lower images indicates which frequencies were associated with the greatest intensities and their evolution over time (y-axis: frequency, x-axis: time, colour map: intensity with blue = max intensity, yellow = min low intensity) ....so the bird sang at mostly only one frequency.

Now compare to the images below...this is the "voice" of another animal...intensities are spread over a wider range of frequencies and the frequencies at which this animal expresses itself decrease with time (again: click to enlarge!)...



any guesses?

Hot!

Sleepy

The birdies are growing and growing and growing. I expect they will be flying out in about 1 week. I do not know if it is just me, but the 5th hatchling does not look quite as healthy, it is not just the fewer feathers. Still I think it has good chances.

I was quite lucky a couple of days ago: I saw ca. 4 of the hatchlings from the 1st batch. They were on the northern balcony making hatchling calls. Mother bird was still feeding them....it has been 2 weeks!! They still look very much like young birds. Their colours are not those of the adult birds yet: they are mostly yellow and black and lack the white feathers on their heads. I noticed that their flying and landing is now quite smooth.

Another side note: I had prepared a scrambled egg to help mother and father bird feed their offspring in box #2. Other bird-friends have claimed that mother and father birds around Germany made good use of the scrambled egg and fed them. Well my Great Tit parent-pair just ignored the egg. Sparrows instead showed a great interest and started feeding. I noticed one female bird act like a "hamster". She tried so hard to fill her beak with as many pieces as possible with the funny side-effect that she would pick one piece up and a couple of other would fall out of her beak. After a couple of minutes and a beak-full of egg she would fly away. I have some pictures that I will post soon.

Birdy-Look

The hatchlings are growing at an amazing rate...

Only 5 Left.

Yesterday morning the 6th hatchling lay dead in the nest. After much hesitation and pondering I opened the nesting box and removed the dead hatchling. I also removed the one that had previously died and that had disappeared from sight. The smell was horrible. The little 5 birds were really silent and still. The one that already could see, made itself as small as possible whilst looking at me with its eyes wide open. Their colours are really intense, black and yellow feathers and a very pink (dark pink) skin...(next year I NEED a colour camera!).

Status this morning:



Of the remaining 5, 4 are about the same (growth-wise), the 5th is a bit smaller and has fewer feathers.