Day 14 Another one

Early in the morning the third one was out.

For the follow-up, please see:
http://blackbulbul2.blogspot.com/

Day 13 Hatched

Early in the morning, I heard "chew-chew" from the nest. That was not the usual sound the bulbul makes. I took my camera and saw one chick was already hatched.




Within two hours, the second one was out. The mother bulbul picked the broken shell and flew somewhere far away to discard it so I had chance to take a good picture of the inside of the nest.

Black Bulbul (紅嘴黑鵯) Day 4: hatching

While the web camera was still monitoring the hatching, I used a usual digital camera to take pictures with much better results.

The temperature outside was 32 degree C. I thought the hatching mother bird must be very hot for it had its mouth open for most of the time.

I suddenly had a chance to have a picture of the inside of the nest. There were three eggs!

Black Bulbul (紅嘴黑鵯) Day 3: hatching

Finally, I could set up the web camera. It's a 130M one. I use the mode that it takes a picture or a short time video every minute automatically. However, in this mode the resolution is limited.

Black Bulbul (紅嘴黑鵯) Day 2

Since it was too late to have them move to a new house, I managed to have a piece of aluminum wire (3mm diameter) going underneath through the part of the nest, half of which was hanging outside the rim of the shade structure. One end of the aluminum wire was hooked to the plastic and the other was glued to the rim.

I tried to use my web camera to monitor the hatching process today (June 17th) but failed. The software didnot work well with the camera.

Black Bulbul (紅嘴黑鵯) Day 1: laying

Since the bulbul (紅嘴黑鵯) determinded to have their nest on the narrow rim, I decided to make a birdhouse for them. It took me five hours to have that done and I planned to put it up there the next morning.
I was too late! In the morning of the next day, the bird was in the nest laying her egg!

Black Bulbul (紅嘴黑鵯) Day 0: nesting

The black bulbul (hypsipetes leucocephalus) bird couple had tried to make a nest on the u-shaped aluminum rim of the shade of my bedroom window for more than five weeks. They failed six times because the rim was not wide enough and the up-blow wind,which caused the nesting materials, thin and soft dried grasses with some kind of white fine thread, put up there by them unable to stay long due to the wind. (My appartment is on the 8th floor.) The white fine thread was not cotton thread. It looked like the same kind thing of a spider thread which served as binding material.

In the middle of this, noticing that they'd not give up making a nest under the shade, I put a piece of step plastic (8" x 10", the green thing in the photo) at the corner with a hope that they'd find it a better nesting place. However, they chose to ignore it.

One day, without our knowing it, they had thier job done! The first day we saw the completed nest was June 15, 2009.