So Geri’s back and Henry’s still around. The small one we now call the Guest, the one who stayed here for two nights, still comes every day but has obviously decided this is not a good place to spend the night. And several new young ones, all still squealing.
Now that the painting is over, more pidgees are coming around. Our imminent trip will hopefully cull them again. They’ll have to find water elsewhere too. HOT now. Supposed to be 110 degrees Fahrenheit here in Bangkok today, with heavy humidity. It is positively brutal outside these days. We leave for Japan on Sunday night and will certainly enjoy that country’s springtime weather. Hope Henry keeps an eye out for us and will know when we’re back.
But sadly, I see that all the photos I’ve posted are now gone! The Multiply website that I had posted them to has shut down. Grrr! I still have all the photos on my computer of course, so they’re not lost to me, but this is really annoying, as selected shots were all arranged. I guess nothing is eternal, not even on the Web. So you can no longer see those. It’s a good thing I posted those YouTube vides. Hopefully that’s one site that will stick around awhile.
Saturday morning and we returned after dark last night. No Henry yet. Seems to take him a couple of days to realize we’re back.
We did see pigeons in Japan as well as some sort of heron, even in the urban areas. Many of the pidgees in Japan are so fat that we took to calling them Sumo. Near the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto, there’s a stand selling ice cream in waffle cones. The pigeons hang around hoping for a handout. One fat Sumo actually walked up and ate pieces of waffle cone from my hand. It – the cone, not Sumo – was coated with melted ice cream. I think I see how some of them get so fat. I wish ours would eat out of our hands, but that’s apparently verboten.
Geri, Henry’s mate, has shown up twice today, so maybe she’ll let Henry know we’re back. I wonder if they can communicate something like this. He might be on the nest with eggs or squabs right now.
Ladyboy (Henry’s first daughter) and her husband have come around, as has Baby, the one with the slightly bent bill.
It still miffs me that the photo website I was using has been closed.
I have opened an account on Flickr and hope to load some new photos there soon. Meanwhile, the YouTube videos linked to above are all still valid.
Henry still has green paint on his tail. There must be at least 100 pigeons down in the temple parking lot every morning these days. But just in the early morning. They must be taking their orders or something, because they all fly away eventually and don’t congregate like that again until early the next morning.
Still have not loaded new photos to the new account. But I want to report that yesterday my wife watched Spooky, she of the crippled leg – again, here’s the YouTube video of her eating – have sex (3) three times with her mate. She really manages well with just her one leg. (Spooky, not my wife.) Spooky reportedly even took the typical “victory lap” common of female pidgees afterward. Her mate is a big strapping male who is almost always with her and seems to protect her while eating.
Still have not put up any new photos of the pidgees on Flickr. One thing is it doesn’t look like I can divide them into photos, but maybe I just need to fool around with the site some. But I’m still looking for a better one.
Henry is coming up on four years, I think. In August. Geri’s been with him a couple of years now. But Geri is still scared of us and gets easily frightened away if we try to protect her from others while she’s eating if she’s here without Henry. Henry knows we’re helping him and doesn’t scare easily.
There’s a new scroungy-looking one, whom we’ve named Scroungy, that seems fresh out of the nest. Has a couple of tumors too, which is sad. Trying to feed that one too.
Poor little Scroungy, the little one with the tumors, started acting sick, then disappeared. We think she’s dead. The one we think is her sibling still comes by.
But the big news is pidgees have started staying here at night. Or close by. We came home Monday after dark to find no less than six (6) of them still here! They freaked when we looked out. Flew away. But now Baby and his new mate – and Baby is not that old – sleep over on the window frames. Both of them are white with a speckled pattern, obviously related to Henry. And right now on the balcony – it’s almost 10:30pm – is a brand new one not seen before today. Could be Henry and Geri’s, white with a speckled pattern. Looks like a little doll. Young but big, so must be a male.
And of course, Henry stops by several times a day and gets fed. Geri doesn’t get fed as much, because she still thinks we’re chasing her instead of helping her.
Well, he didn’t stay in the box but rather perched on the rail all night. A handsome one though.
Henry jumped up in the window for his morning feeding a little while ago. Coming up on four years now. If we ever move, we’ll have to trap him – and Geri – and take them along with us.
Well, that new one obviously decided he’d made a mistake overnighting on the balcony, because he’s not stayed here again. But over on the window frames, three pidgees sleep every night now. There’s a gray one, and we think it’s one we’ve seen with a hurt foot. That one stays far over towards the end of the building, on the rim above one of our bedroom windows.
But the other two are Baby and his new mate, and they stay on the rim just above our dining-room window and right by the balcony. The rains have started, but they all just sit out there in the rain at night without moving to the balcony, no matter how hard it’s raining. If we look out, they just stare back at us.
Baby is at least six months old now, which I think is the age when they become sexually mature. But his mate seems to be very young, yet another one that’s white with black speckles, related to Henry somehow. But they always stick together now, and Baby seems very protective. Although a male for sure, Baby is still small, and it’s cute to see him puff out his neck in anger when he’s getting mad at another pidgee.
It still amazes me that you can recognize and distinguish all these pidgees. And to think you started this thread because you wanted to know how to get rid of them!
There has been a Development, with a capital D. And we are Puzzled.
You know that we’ve referred to the tree pot on the right as the “living room.” (Thanks to Multiply pulling the plug on their site, I can no longer show you this, at least not right now, but I’m sure you remember.) I did a little cleaning on the balcony today, and the living room was empty. I left, the wife came home about 5:30pm and saw several pidgees but nothing in the living room. Close to 7pm she looked out, and … there’s an egg in the living room! Just an egg. One single egg. No parent. No one claiming it. It was just about dark by then, and all the pidgees had left. When I returned home tonight, I went out onto the balcony to inspect the egg, thinking maybe it’s just an empty shell that got blown or otherwise transported here. But no, it’s an egg all right, a regular egg. It’s going on 10:30pm right now, and no parent has shown up. It was raining some today, so maybe the mother got stuck somewhere, caught in the rain and then in the dark. But this is like one of those cases where you find a baby in the bus-station lavatory. And I’m wondering if the mother got stuck somewhere, will she lay the second egg where she is now? And have one egg in each of two locations??
Baby and his mate are over on the window frames like usual, but we think his mate may be too young to lay eggs or even be sexually active. Besides, she never hangs around here like Baby does, just returns about nighttime. When I was out on the balcony, I looked up and saw another white-ish couple on the window frames higher up. But nothing is keeping any of these guys from flying back here, so I doubt it’s their egg. This is quite a mystery.
