Monday morning. Marcus and Mochi, ages 25 and 24 days, have started developing pustules on their heads. I have been checking them regularly and first noticed them yesterday. Saw they were a little bigger today, although still pretty small. We still have a lot of medicine left from treating Kevin and Sophie, and I started dosing these squabs this morning. I doubt I’ll be able to give them a full week’s treatment, they’ll be flying by then, but our experience is even two or three days’ worth does the trick, and I feel confident I can get in maybe five days. With Matthew, eight weeks old tomorrow, never having shown any signs at all of virus, we had high hopes for Marcus and Mochi, but Alas! it was not to be. They should be okay though.
We’re pretty sure Matthew now is actually a girl. Has a very feminine look. “He” and Sophie, who turned three months old this past Saturday, still stay here at night but often fight. Seems to be Matthew starting it most of the time, and I have to squirt “his” little butt.
It’s from the parents. One or both are carriers. Why Matthew didn’t get it is a mystery.
We asked the vet the last time about sterilizing Ladyboy. She said she’d have to check with the head vet there at the faculty about whether they do that – this doesn’t come up a lot apparently, sterilizing pigeons – but she warned the procedure could kill her, so we said to forget it.
A little drama tonight (Friday night). Marcus and Mochi are both four weeks old now, 29 and 28 days old. When the wife and I returned home after dark, we found we were one squab short. Marcus was gone! I looked out the bedroom window but didn’t see him on the balconies below us. Couldn’t see him anywhere on the window frames.
The wife suggested I go look downstairs. So I took the shoebox with me, the one we use to smuggle pidgees out of and into the building for vet trips (and where I put them to administer their medicine). We live on the sixth floor, and there’s an internal staircase right out our front door. It runs down the side of the building, and I’m in the habit of just using the stairs. On each landing between floors is a window comprising five or six panes, only one of which opens. I’m going down the stairs when suddenly there’s Marcus! He’s outside, right in the window between the third and fourth floors. The pane that opens doesn’t open all the way, and I could not reach him. But I could reach him with the shoebox. I managed to shove him off the window and into the box. But before I could draw the box back in through the window, Marcus hopped out and fluttered downward erratically, sort of like Woodstock in the Peanuts comic strip. So down the rest of the stairs I go and outside. That side of the building is the back, and there was Marcus on the ground. He ran from me and tried to fly a little, but he’s still not mastered it completely yet. I managed to corner him. Put him in the shoebox, smuggled him back inside, and he’s out there on the balcony right now, none the worse for wear.
I’ve been giving the guys medicine for five days now, but obviously they’re starting to fly. Just need to do it a couple more days, but I think they’ll be all right even if I can’t dose them any further. Man, I’ve really become proficient at this. If you ever need to make small birds take some medicine, I’m the guy to do it.
Lydia’s out there tonight too. She’s been stopping by in the daytime, but Dad chased her away at night quite awhile ago. Not tonight though. She’s really turned out pretty, almost all white.
Sunday night and the squabs have had a full course of medicine, one week. Except I couldn’t catch Marcus this morning, he flew away, so he missed one, but I caught him when he was home tonight. Should be okay. Marcus is flying more now, so I don’t think there will need to be any more rescues. Mochi still doesn’t seem interested in flying. I don’t think she’s even gone up to any of the rails, just hops up onto the green concrete verge. She’ll fly in her own time, they always do. They’re 31 and 30 days old now and looking like little pigeons.
We’re just days away from the new hatchings, but still I’ve not posted any photos of this last batch. Just too busy. Will try to do that soon.
Sadly, we had to chase away Lydia tonight. Why she started coming back we don’t know, but she keeps attacking all the others. If she wants to come back to stay, she can’t be brawling all the time.
Can anyone summarize for me the reason or the way that this thread has been alive for seven years? I’m not saying anything for or against it, because I don’t know anything about it. I open the front page, seems to be about baby pigeons… I look at the last page… it seems to be about baby pigeons. 2,128 posts about baby pigeons? Is there something really incredible about baby pigeons that I’m clearly not privy to?
It’s oddly addictive - I’m not sure why I find the pidgee soap opera so entertaining, but I keep clicking on this thread so obviously there’s something to it.
It’s not the SAME baby pigeons obviously - there have been dozens by now.
And I am pleased to report little Rudolph broke out of his egg this evening (Wednesday evening), right on time. Waiting for Clarice now.
Again, I apologize for not getting new photos up. None posted yet of the previous batch and here we are with the new one! We’ve been extra busy, especially now that we’re starting the process of getting the wife an Immigrant Visa to the US. But I am going to make an extra effort to get some up this weekend.
Speaking of the previous batch, Marcus has left us. Not seen for a few days now, since the weekend. But 33-day-old Mochi finally started flying and is still here at night. The medicine seems to have worked, and the pustules are diminishing in size.
I saw this newest info while meaning to check the thread, I knew it was about time for the latest batch to be hatching. Glad to see Rudolph is out, now for Clarice!
Stoid, I can’t explain about why the thread is so neat, it just is. It’s not entirely baby pigeons, we get interesting bits of Thai life and culture thrown in.
And we have little Clarice! Hatched yesterday morning (Thursday morning). Rudolph is technically a day older but really just around 12 hours older. But he incubated longer, the eggs being laid 48 hours apart, so he should be the bigger one.
There are. One example here. And here. But I’m not involved in any. We’re lucky that we live in a relatively tree-filled neighborhood, a rarity in Bangkok, and there’s lots of birdlife, although nothing too exotic.
Since you are able to handle the young ones it could be interesting to band them. You might learn of the lives of some of the nestlings after they have gone out into the world.
That means I’d have to go searching for them, because not all that many come back. There’s quite a large pigeon population in our neighborhood now (no doubt helped a little by us, heh).
What I meant was that someone else might record their movements when they were banding. Here in my city there’s one woman who bands local birds. She sets up a nearly invisible net near the feeders to catch them. Their species and gender is recorded, and whether or not the bird has been already banded, by her or someone else. That way, when records are combined, an overall picture of species movement may be obtained.
Ah, I see. I’ve not heard of anything like that going on.
Speaking of pigeons, there’s a fairly long-running scam going on in the Rattanakosin section of Bangkok, the old part of the city. There are lots of pigeons in and around a large open field called Sanam Luang. It’s right by the Temple of the Emerald Buddha and the old Grand Palace. “Helpful” vendors will pester you to buy pigeon food to feed the birds. Rather expensive and woe to anyone who tries to bring their own!
Dad teaching Marcus and Mochi, ages 25 and 24 days. You can just see the beginnings of the pustules on Mochi’s head. And here’s a cute one where it looks like they’re bowing down to Dad. In reality, The Bully was preening them and then stopped when he noticed I was paying attention to him, and the kids were just relaxing while he did it. But it looks like they’re paying fealty to their father.
And now the moment you’ve been waiting for … Rudolph and Clarice! One day old and freshly hatched, respectively.
That same night, I took a night shot of Mochi. (Marcus is long gone by this point.) Not sure how visible her (his?) remaining pustules are, but they’ve definitely reduced in size.
None of Mom in this round of photos, but I assure you she’s still here.
And you can see all of the photos on a single page here.
Going on 11:30pm now, and tonight we have what’s become the usual crew of Lydia, Sophie and Mochi, plus the parents and new squabs. Matthew is gone tonight, but he (she?) sometimes does miss a night. But Lydia’s become a brawling little bitch, and we often have to squirt her to get her to stop picking on the others. She even chases Mama! Looks sweet and angelic when she’s sleeping though.
Rudolph and Clarice are 17 and 16 days old, and now it appears we may have gotten them backward. The older may be a female and the younger a male. Maybe. So in a first, we may have to switch their names. We’re still deciding. But they’re healthy and showing no signs of virus so far. The one who is Rudolph for now, the first hatched, is going to be another white, while Clarice will have a pattern similar to Sophie’s.
Sadly, the saga will probably draw to a close before the year is out. It pains me to say this, but they may have to search for a new home. We started the process this week for the wife to get an Immigrant Visa to the US and hope to move back there about mid-year at the earliest. We know Ladyboy and The Bully had another home before. We’ll never know what happened to that one, but at least it won’t be something brand new. Still, we’ve looked after this couple for almost three years now, and it will be sad to send the, away. But we’re almost certainly going to have to sell the place. There will be a few more batches, they’re screwing like teenagers again now, but eventually we may have to put up some netting and get them to move on. I wish we could take them with us.
Hatched yesterday morning (Thursday morning). Rudolph is technically a day older but really just around 12 hours older. But he incubated longer, the eggs being laid 48 hours apart, so he should be the bigger one.