Ramblin' Rosen

R.I.P. Monster
Originally uploaded by lilitu93.

This photo shows Tony stroking the baby pigeon we named Monster. It was taken yesterday.

Today we we woke up, and s/he was gone. We think maybe a crow got him/her.

R.I.P., Monster.

I’m still leaving up the Pigeon Cam, though it’s not too exciting right now, but Hattie and Sid have started beaking again (pigeon kissing). Also, it looks like they are rebuilding the nest. We’re figuring out ways to keep their nest a bit more covered, so that birds flying about won’t be able to see the babies if they decide to lay eggs there again.

Both Tony and I are really sad that neither baby made it. Even though there’s hardly a shortage of pigeons in London, these were “our” pigeons, so to speak, and, although they weren’t our pets, we’ve grown attached to them since they’ve been living on the balcony. Let’s all wish them more luck for their next attempt.

Only one baby made it
Originally uploaded by lilitu93.

The other baby that was half-hatched died while hatching. Poor thing. The body is still in the nest, however.

The other baby has grown so much–it only hatched Thursday, and look how much bigger it is already.

Two babies!
Originally uploaded by lilitu93.

Both baby pigeons have hatched. One hatched two days ago (we think), and the other hatched yesterday (when this picture was taken).

For more pictures of the babies, see this photo set on Flickr, and don’t forget almost real-time pidge action at Pidge Cam 2005.

As I mentioned in my last post, two pigeons are starting a family on our balcony. We’ve set up a webcam that’s pointed at the pigeons’ nest: The Pidge Cam 2005.

At the moment, the site is beta–we’re testing whether our connection can handle updating it every 30 seconds, plus the site needs some design lovin’ before I’ll promote it beyond this blog. But I wanted to give my loyal readers the chance to see it right away.

Please take a look at it and let me know what you think. For some reason, comments on this blog have now become moderated–I think the spam filter is being overzealous–so don’t panic if any replies don’t show up right away. Sorry for the inconvenience, but it’s better than having 100s of spam comments for poker and viagra.

Pigeon egg on our balcony
Originally uploaded by lilitu93.

A pair of pigeons have made a nest in a planter on our balcony. They’ve laid two eggs and are taking turns sitting on it. Squabs should be hatching any day now.

This picture was taken a few weeks ago before the second egg was laid. Pigeons lay a pair of eggs, one a day or so before the other, and they sit on their eggs for about 18 days before they hatch. So any day now, we will have squabs to photograph.

I’m also setting up a pigeon web cam–I’ll be posting here with more details once the cam is up and running.

The Vic Meister.
Originally uploaded by TW.

I’ve started a group on flickr, the online photosharing service, called I love my bird. It’s for people to share photos of their pet birds, and it’s free to sign up to flickr.

If you have a pet bird and have photos you want to share, please join us and share pics of your fids.

(The model in this picture is Vic, one of our two cockatiels.)

Coot in St James’s Park,
originally uploaded by lilitu93.

Yesterday, my husband and I went to St James’s Park in Central London. For those who aren’t familiar with the park, it has a man-made lake that is a sanctuary for many exotic and native waterfowl living there. I took along my camera to take pictures of the birds and posted the best of the bunch to flickr .

I took several photos of this strange bird, which I assumed was one of the exotic birds that lived in the park. When I looked it up on the Internet, I found out that this weird bird is, infact, a native of Britain called a coot that lives all over Britian except for some parts of Scotland.

It’s a good thing that we went yesterday, as the weather seems to have changed today, and it’s definitely no longer summer.

The Organization of Professional Aviculturists in Florida is raising funds to help save the birds of Howard Voren’s aviaries. His aviaries in Florida were hit very hard by Hurricane Frances–almost all the trees at the aviary were uprooted, and many landed on the cages. From the site:

Almost every tree on the property, including a canopy of jacaranda trees Howard planted 20 years ago, have been uprooted and they have fallen on top of cages. Hundreds of birds are still trapped in damaged cages. Virtually everything has been crushed and is standing in muck.

The site has some very sad pictures of scared parrots stuck in their cages. Also, the parrots who have already been rescued are in temporary shelters that are not suitable for long-term use.

If you can spare even a small amount, please consider donating through the site. They take PayPal, as well as other methods of donation.

[Thanks to Teddy of parrotlink for posting about this to various parrot lists.]

Feathers 4,
originally uploaded by lilitu93.

Today I took some photos of fur and feather textures. I was inspired to do this by the Textures group on Flickr, since this month’s theme is textures that are soft to the touch.

This is one of my favourites of the photos I took today. It’s a close-up of my cockatiel Fred’s neck and shows three of the four colours on a standard tiel. It isn’t obvious at first what it’s a photo of, unless you know cockatiels well, and it really shows off the feather texture.

I have other photos I took today in my Textures photoset. One of the ones of Vic will be used in the CD art for the forthcoming Sol Invictus release, The Angel.

Elsa Closeup,
originally uploaded by FuzzyButt.

This photo of Elsa, a Siberian/Canadian lynx is part of Fuzzybutt’s Flickr photostream. Fuzzybutt volunteers at the Barry R. Kirshner Wildlife Foundation in California. He’s posted many of his photos of large cats to Flickr, including a wonderful picture of him cuddling a worried leopard.