We Have Pigeon Eggs

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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Wednesday morning, and Bob is two days old. Susie’s not hatched yet; I hope it’s not another unfertilized egg. :frowning:

But Bob is certainly a healthy little squab, and I’ve taken some photos of mother and child that I’ll post soon. I wonder if I’m the first creature to have seen Bob. Little Pidgee was gone when the wife left at 6:40 Monday morning, when Bob was still in the egg; Little Pidgee was gone at 8:20am when I looked out and saw Bob. So maybe Little Pidgee was gone during that entire interval.

And no sign of Big Pidgee. Little Pidgee is having to pull full-time duty as a single mom. :frowning: We can’t understand what’s happened to him. It’s been 5-1/2 days now since he was last seen, a full week since he’s bothered himself with the eggs. And he was such a family man in the past. Always the better parent, indeed always the squabs’ favorite parent. Seemed to like it here better than Little Pidgee did. Lovingly helped Little Pidgee build the current nest. Then Poof! Gone. The wife is afraid something dire has happened to him, but my gut feeling is no. He showed up for water late last Thursday after blowing off egg duty, so that leads me to believe his absence is willful. There’s still the odd pigeon or two in the neighborhhod, but the good-sized flock we saw a couple of weeks ago left; I think he went with them. :frowning:

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Come back, Big Pidgee! Your wife and son need you!

<sigh> I’ve called this a soap opera in the past, but I swear I get more caught in the travails of your pigeons than I ever did even at my worst addiction to General Hospital.
Perhaps it would be a good thing if the second egg doesn’t hatch, if BP doesn’t show up. I can’t imagine one pigeon would be able to make enough food to raise two babies.
:frowning:

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Since mom is pulling full-time duty, when is she eating? Have you put food out for her while BP is evidently ranging further away for food?

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Yeah, go dig up some worms and put them in a container on the balcony for her so it’s easy for her to eat and feed Bob without going too far away.

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Thursday morning, and still no Susie. But we’re not quite out of the window for hatching yet, so we still have some hope.

Little Pidgee flies off to feed a couple or three times a day. Bob’s safe here. Plenty of food right down below on the mansion grounds next door, and in the past, when the squabs were about a week or 10 days old, both parents began leaving them alone for long stretches. But I think I may finally go look for some pigeon food for the poor girl.

We really wonder what would have caused Big Pidgee to up and leave like that. Saw him once after he blew off egg duty, so we know he was okay. And his disappearance coincided with that of a sizable flock of pigeons, so we figure he left with them. But we thought pigeons mated for life? And he’d always been the more conscientious one. Lived here for 14 months, too. Still other birds around; it’s only the pigeons that have left. Odd.

This past Sunday, the day before Bob hatched, Little Pidgee kept sitting up on the edge of the balcony peering around, like she was searching for Big Pidgee. Very sad. :frowning:

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Almost 11:15 now, and Little Pidgee left for lunch. She’s settled into a new pattern – for now. But yes, putting out some food may guarantee she’ll stick around for the squab.

Little Bob is out there with the egg, no doubt wondering where everyone is.

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BTW: I’ve seen pigeon/dove food in certain Western-style grocery stores here before, and it’s different from regular bird seed. But if I can’t find that, what else would be good to get? I recall my ground-up crackers being laughed at by them in the past.

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http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/chickens_retired/35035

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Well, this batch seems doomed to tragedy. I looked out this morning to see if Little Pidgee may have eaten any of the food we put out last night, only to find her gone and the egg on the balcony floor over by the “living room”! She often flies straight up out of the box instead of hopping out and taking off from an edge. I speculate the egg may have been stuck on her foot when she flew out. But she definitely managed to knock it out somehow.

There was a small puddle of yellow fluid next to it, and ants swarming everywhere. I poured a little water on the egg to get rid of the ants and then inspected it. Sure enough, there was a little crack in it. Very thin, so I’m sure no ants got inside, but that’s where the fluid leaked from. Unlike the unfertilized egg in the previous batch, which felt as light as air, this one had some weight to it. But the egg is 20 days old now, so if Susie was going to hatch out, she probably would have done so by now. At any rate, I don’t think the egg getting cracked now would be enough to kill her, as she would probably just finish the job of opening the egg herself at this point. But just in case, I put the egg back into the nest and will leave it for a couple days more. The ants aren’t getting into the nest, and I think all of the fluid may have leaked out by now anyway.

The wife blames Big Pidgee for all of the present troubles. He’s no longer her hero. This is what happens when you fall in with a bad crowd.

We don’t believe there’s a food shortage in the area. This is a lush tropical neighborhood, and we’re well into the rainy season. Life is burgeoning everywhere. Still, since we don’t want Little Pidgee to jump ship either, we decided it was only prudent to make it easier for her to feed. So I did pick up some bird food yesterday. I decided on a canary-and-finch mix, because it contains various grains and some rind. I also picked up some mynah-bird food, which looks a bit like Cocoa Puffs. Mynahs are the next-largest birds in our area, after pigeons. We see a lot of them.

So I put each type of food in its own container and set the containers out next to the water. This morning, I think I detected a small indentation in the canary-and-finch mix, but otherwise the food looked untouched. Little Pidgee was out this morning and came back, then left again without touching the food.

I’ll pick up some frozen corn and peas over the weekend, thaw them and put some out to see if she’ll eat those. There have been times while feeding the squabs that they’ve coughed up a kernel of corn, so we know they do like those.

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Oh, dear! It gets worse and worse. :frowning:

And you didn’t mention Bob at all. Is he out on the roof?

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No, Bob’s the one bright spot in all of this. Four days old now and a healthy little bugger. Wiggles all around. Too bad he seems doomed to be an only child, like George before him. Photos soon.

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A weird day, pigeonwise. I mentioned above that despite the crack, I replaced the egg in the nest. Late in the morning, Little Pidgee returned. I looked out after a little while to see the egg now at the far end of the flower box! “What the …?” I’m thinking. “Did she do that on purpose?” I thought I might put it back one more time, but she didn’t leave the nest again before I had to go out. I gave the wife a call in the late afternoon while she was home, and she told me Little Pidgee was gone, so I asked her to go ahead and move the egg back into the nest proper.

But then, a short while after Little Pidgee returned, the wife looked out, and this time the egg was all the way over on the other side of the balcony! With Little Pidgee sitting on the green verge of the balcony. Well, that’s it, she must have been trying to get rid of the egg. But how was she moving it??? :confused: With her feet? We never saw her actually move the egg.

The wife left the egg where it was, to show me when I came home late tonight. I thought maybe I’d keep it up in the “living room” for a couple of days, but this time when I picked it up, instead of a small crack, there was a hole in it. I could see inside clearly, and it was empty. I thought I’d felt some weight to it in the mornig, but that must have been my imagination. The wife said no ants had been trying to get at it, so the fluid must have all emptied out earlier. Or maybe the weight I felt was more fluid, and it ran out into the nest? But it turns out the egg was unfertilized after all, so I removed it.

That last unfertilized egg, the parents never tried to remove the egg themselves. I finally had to do it after much longer than this. Maybe Little Pidgee is a little stressed right now. :frowning:

The wife is wondering if maybe the neighbors above us killed Big Pidgee. We thought he might have been sleeping up on their balcony some nights, as it looked like that was where he flew up to at dusk sometimes. Several of the wife’s colleagues know about our pigeons, and they all think he’s dead. But I still think not. If the wife had just not seen him that last time after he missed egg duty, I might be inclined to agree, but he missed egg duty willfully on that day for sure, and he disappeared with the other pigeons. I think he’s still alive. Hope so, anyway.

Also, late in the morning I saw two pigeons over on the window frames eying our balcony. One of them may have been George, the previous squab.

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Saturday morning, and Little Pidgee’s away for breakfast. The food we left out remains untouched by her. BUT … it seems the friggin’ ants like mynah-bird food! :mad: They were having a feast when I looked out. Drowned all I could and got rid of the mynah food. They weren’t touching the canary-and-finch mix, though.

Bob’s five days old and looking big.

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If you put the bowl of food in a shallow dish, like a pie pan or similar, and put water in the dish, it acts as a moat that ants can’t get past to get to the food in the middle.

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Actually, we thought of that, but then she wasn’t touching the mynah food so we decided not to bother with it. We did leave the other food out there, and she’s still not touched that.

We picked up some frozen mixed vegetables today (Saturday), consisting of peas, corn and carrots, thawed them and put a little out. She’s not touched that either. Seems to want to hunt her own food, although she does enjoy our water.

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And here are the promised photos. :smiley:

Sunday, July 26
Mother and eggs.

Monday, July 27
Fresh Pidgee! Bob is less than 2 hours old here. And inside the hatched egg; that’s some dried fluid in there. Alas! The other egg turned out to be unfertile. And mother and squab.

Wednesday, July 29
Little Pidgee with 2-day-old Bob. In this one, he’s sleeping at an odd angle. And Mama feeding Bob.

Thursday, July 30
Bob at 3 days. Still holding out hope for the other egg. All those feathers in the nest came from Big Pidgee. He lost a lot of feathers recently while preening but didn’t look bald; new ones must have been growing in.

Friday, July 31
Bob is four days old and a sleepy squab here. This is the day we found the egg outside of the box, and I replaced it in the nest. If you look closely, you can just see it between Little Pidgee’s feathers and her foot. But then in this shot, she’s moved the egg to the other side of the box! You can see some feathers stuck to it.

Saturday, August 1
And that brings us up to today. (Technically yesterday, because it’s just after 1am here.) Bob is 5 days old now, and here you can see him working on his tan. Note the egg has now been removed for good after repeated attempts by Little Pidgee to get rid of it. Then we have Bob and me! And a close-up of Bob. His little feet aren’t quite good at grasping yet; that will come in a few more days.

And you can see all of these photos on one page here.

One other thing we noticed is that the egg Bob hatched out of has gone missing! Upon close inspection, it doesn’t look like it was mulched into the nest. We’re thinking Little Pidgee flew it away, both halves. She’s never done that before. Of course, she never tried to get rid of the previous unfertilized egg either, but we think she was attempting to get this one out of here, too. Maybe stress is making her more annoyed with these things in her way?

And Little Pidgee’s becoming more skittish again. While she’s sitting on eggs and for the first few days after hatching, it takes a little effort to scare her away, but now that Bob is a few days old, if we even look at her funny, she’ll often scramble over to the rails (leaving Bob to fend for himself).

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Sunday morning, and Little Pidgee simply won’t touch any food we put out for her. She clearly just wants to hunt, so okay. We’ll leave the other food out for her for a while, though. (The ants like the vegetables, too, but we’ve propped the dish up now.)

Saw another pigeon over on the window frames when I popped my head out this morning. It became frightened and flew away, but again I think it could have been George.

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So it’s finally come to this. It’s about 9:30 Sunday night now. Little Pidgee left around 10:30 or 11 this morning and has not returned once. Staying someplace else tonight. By the time it got dark about 7pm, we figured 6-day-old Bob must be starving. I ran out and picked up some corn soup, an eye dropper and a syringe. We brought Bob inside, sat him on some newspapers and fed him the soup.

We called the wife’s niece, who keeps a couple of doves and has had to give them medicine before, and she gave us advice about how to open Bob’s beak. I opened the beak while the wife administered the soup. She tried the syringe first (there was no needle in it), but the dropper seeemd to work better. Bob seemed to fight less once he realized he was getting fed, or maybe my skill just increased. But we did manage to feed him. Don’t know if we fed him too much or too little or what. We fed him until it felt like it was enough, cleaned the soup off of him that didn’t make it inside and put him back out. He’s still breathing!

I hope Little Pidgee stops by tomorrow. We can’t be doing this all day long. But the niece will come by tomorrow evening to help the wife if Little Pidgee does another runner tomorrow night.

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P.S.: He’s seems contented and is out there snoozing away now. Before we fed him the corn soup, he kept restlessly poking around in the nest. The poor little guy must have been hungry. May just be exhausted now, too, from his Big Adventure indoors.

Bob is the second squab after George to make it inside.

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Oh, dear, oh, dear. This is sooo sad. :frowning:
I fear we are approaching the end of the pidgee saga.