The chicks progress

Big Brothers are great to sleep with. So soft and warm.

Don't be fooled by those yellow feathers. We thought The Goose was going to be yellow. The oldest does have white flight feathers coming in. So he may be yellow. The middle chick has dark flights and tail, so he is feathering like Goose.
All by himself so you can see how small he is and how quick they grow. only 4 days between him and the middle one. 9 days between him and the oldest.

Beck

He's Back

I knew the Goose couldn't stay gone too long. Right after posting the last about him and the new baby, Bananas started calling. The Goose answered and Target the one eyed cat pinpointed him. He was under the china cabinet. Don't know how, why or the gory details, but he flitted out, flew to a fan blade and took a look around. Seeing it was safe to come home he headed for the cage. I opened the door and in he went. Everyone is happily setting on the post preening away. He only lost one feather that I found and that was from coming out from under the cabinet. Tight sqeeze you see.

Glad you are home Goose. I was missing your calls.

Beck

Even I don't believe this!

You have just got to see it to believe it.
That's right there is a new baby. UNBELIEVABLE. They were born on the 1st, the 5th and this last one I figure was born late Friday or early Saturday morning.
We had checked the babies and taken pictures Friday morning before school. So the new one had to have hatched after that. Since it is twice the size of the eggs and compared to other pics of daily growth, I figure it to be 48 hrs old. Since this was discovered and taken late last night, that makes the baby three days old now.
I am still amazed and shaking my head. I candled and figured 3 maybe 5. We had one that died while piping, so that leaves one more possible. I won't check until tomorrow but do I dare think that another may hatch? What about the other 4 eggs? Could I have been wrong about them too? Is Lucy playing games with me and only setting a few choice eggs at a time? If that is the case, She may have babies from a month old to days old in the nest at the same time.

With all this happening The Goose has turned up missing. We have looked and looked but not deeply into closets, drawers and such. Short of buying an endoscope we have no evidence of foul play. HaHa. I really think if someone decided to chomp on him we would have feather evidence somewhere. None. Nada. Nothing. Not a peep from the rest of the gang and no one is looking guilty when I ask who ate Gooseberry. Normally if any of them did something wrong I get the head hanging I'm guilty, sulking away. I get nothing from anyone. No one is pointing paws or even whiskers.

Well The Goose liked to fly so perhaps he has flown his feathery little butt into some trouble he couldn't get out of. I'll just keep an ear open for a day or two more before I really give up on him.

Beck

Feb 9,2007

The chicks are growing fast. Here's a pic from Friday morning.

Beck

Feb 6,2007

Wow what a week. Cold, cold, cold and now it's snowing. Actually it warmed up a bit. It was too cold to snow. Looks like it's set in for the day. A nice light snow. One of those that sometimes you only get a dusting out of. This one looks like we will get an inch or two though. Of course it wouldn't bother Me or Mother Nature if it hung in there and gave us a nice insulation against the bitter cold. It would sure help the freezing pipes that Chicago has been handling. We haven't had any here cause mom has a secret way of handling that. I don't gripe about the faucets dripping. LOL.

Now for the feature of the week. Remember there were 9 eggs. Now we have 6. One baby did die while hatching. The egg was open and seemed to be stuck or it could be that it was just too weak to push on out. So again they had 3 hatch and this time kept 2 alive.
Bananas, there in yellow just loves when I open the nest box. He crowds over and gets a good look at the kids. He would sit and watch then for hours if I left it down and open. Lucy, there beside him, doesn't mind the attention either. She loves it open and trys to open the lid when it is hung up. Big brother Goose helps with keeping the little ones warm. He doesn't seem to mind sharing Mom and Dad. I have to be very attentive and quick when I open the door to the cage though, because he is a great excape artist and is very hard to get back in.
As you can see there are two babies this time. The larger one is 2 days older and a bit bigger, but surprizingly they double their size every day and soon we won't notice much difference.

Feb 1,2007

We have a new hatchling. Ya that's a lot of eggs there, but I candled them a week ago and I think there are only 3 to 5 that will produce. I was not expecting that peep peep peep this morning. I was getting Cody ready for school, working on spelling words and finding shoes, we both heard it at almost the same time. I turned to look at the cages and Cody squealed "A BABY". I quickly looked and sure enough there it was. I wanted to move things around, as it looked uncomfortable, but I left it alone. We were lucky enough to catch this one very soon after hatching. It was dry, but she had not removed the shell yet. So Cody did get to see the shell after hatching. Not much to see, but for the curious, it does have the skin like you see on boiled eggs. There is no fluid to see of any sort, since that is used up by the baby as nourishment.
This is so quick after Gooseberry's hatching, I am definatly pulling the nest box as soon as they can come out. I don't want her to kill herself laying eggs. Which she will do as part of nature. I would rather she spent some time growing to a ripe old age instead.

Mom is setting on the Bamboo Dad is in middle and Aunt Lacey on the right. Goose is under mom inside the bamboo you can just see his green tail if you look close. Seems he is rather camera shy.
Beck

The Birds.

This is Gooseberrry. Our little baby a couple posts ago.
Isn't he handsome. I'm pretty sure at this point it is a male.
He has figured out how to fly and finds it quite fun. He and his dad will flit out and back, around the room a couple times. Hang out with the teils. Harass mom and aunt Lacy. Go adventuring to the ceiling fans, peek down the hall. Go everywhere but back in the cage. Goose spent the night out with the Teils last night as I just could not get hold of him safely to get him back to bed.

None the worse for the night away from momma Lucy, he seems quite independent this morning. Kind of like that teenager with the new drivers license. We might need to pull his spark plugs.




Here he is visiting the Teils.




The Teils. Gobbles (in back) and Ducky, aka Peanutbutt.









Peanut in a good mood.






Mom Lucy on post and Aunty Lacy on bamboo


Lucy and Bananas


A bird on his finger makes him a Happy Boy.


The Goose and Father Bananas
What handsome boys they are.
Oh I suppose you wonder why the strange names. Well when Lucy and Lacy came home, we thought that Lacy was a boy and we named her Dezi. Then her nose bridge color came in. So she became Lacy. Why not Ethel? Ask the 8 yr old. Any way we found 2 males, we were sure this time. Bananas was such a pretty pure yellow that he just became bananas due to his actions and color. His cage mate, Crazy Quilt was just that. He was a harlequin coloring, every shade of blue green and yellow you could think of. In his crazy antics we think he fell and broke his neck.

Now the reason we named The Goose, Gooseberry is because we wanted to stay with fruit names and Kiwi, Quince and others just didn't fit.

Someday I'll get pics of Lacy, aka Bat woman, and show how she gets around. She hangs upside down 90% of the time.


Enjoy
Beck
PS Lucy and Bananas have 3 eggs in the box now. They hatched 3 of the 4 eggs from The Gooses nesting. We had 3 live babies for 2 days. Not sure what happened there. Hopefully Dad and Mom are more experienced now and will do better this nesting.