An Old Shama

Its been a while since I last took a photo of this Shama. A wild specimen from Rompin & estimated to be more than 9 years old (6 years with me).

It has just finished molting and form is rising slowly. Didn't realise he has learned the call of Blackie, the crow (in the beginning of video). At 45 seconds into the video, its feathers suddenly tightened which gave him a nicer more slick look. Hope he do well as a tutor to the youngsters :)

In the background singing, is another wild specimen that I have kept for 2 years. That one has been singing from day 3 out of the jungle and went through 2 bad molts. Hopefully the current one is a good molt for him.

Unwelcomed visitors

3rd cat in 3 days.... this contraption is proving to be a good investment ;)

Released some 12km away, I still have this lingering fear that they may find their way home.
To minimise that, the place of release should have a food source & preferably the journey passes a river....

Turkistan Roach

Was thinking of destroying or giving away my culture of Turkistan Roaches. The aviary birds don't really fancy eating them. The caged birds, out of lack of choice, if given the Turks, will gladly devour them. Problem is they are quite fast moving and difficult to catch. sometimes when the bird pecks at them and leave them on the floor they quickly ran away, which may pose a problem later on....

So, I replaced egg trays with bunched up newspapers as hiding areas for them. Harvesting is also made easier as it is much more convenient to handle the much smaller bunched up newspaper than the egg trays. Knocking them into plastic tubs and picks up suitable size roaches with a pair of tweezers and squeeze them half dead.

Hmmm.... lets not waste good food. Will continue feeding them to caged birds.... just a little bit more work :)

Polygamy in the wild

Recently a friend narrated an interesting obsrvation of polygamous breeding of Oriental Magpie Robin in the wild. I trust his observatory skills (well, some people who are not as keen in Magpie chciks collection may mistaken a family unit as a two adult females with a male)

Anyway as the story goes, an old orchid flower pot that was hanging in front of a house became nesting home to 2 female Magpie Robin. Only a single male was seen in the vicinity. A total of 8 eggs was laid in the same flower pot, out of which all 8 hatched.

Asking permission from the Malay house owner, he took 3 chicks away from the clutch after making sure they are males and left the 5 females behind. It is interesting as this is the first time that I have heard of such nest sharing in territorial birds like the Magpie Robin.

Shows how little I understand and how much more there is to learn about our own local birds :)