The Eggs
After being in Petri's cage for around 11 days, Clarice laid her first egg. I looked in the box a few times and it seems that half of the time she sits on the egg and the other half she sits next to the egg. This is normal behavior for a cockatiel as she should not want to start incubating this egg if more are on the way!
Clarice with her first egg ever!
I suspected it was going to happen soon. She started spending a lot of time in the box over the previous two days and finally seemed only to be coming out to eat. She also began to move the bedding around inside the box and threw about a fourth of it out onto the cage floor as well.
The next day I hardly saw her at all, and when i checked on her I saw that she had an egg in her care. My friend and I were both somewhat amazed by this as well because we weren't sure if she would be the type to sit and care for eggs, being as curious as she is and always wanting human attention.
Petri still spends a lot of his time outside of the box, but goes in with her periodically. He seems to be the guard, as he likes to call to her when I get too close. He comes scrambling over to me and screams at me, haha. But when he calms down, and realizes it's me, and we can do our whistling duets together again.
Above: Petri on his way over to check me out!
Below: The eggs are laid every day until a clutch of 5 is laid.
Their clutch is a normal average number, as most cockatiel clutches are 4-6 eggs.
Journal: Before the Babies Hatch
Petri is starting to become more needy of us. He seems to be tired of being stuck in the cage all day, though we don't think its a good idea for him to be out and about. The cockatiel cage is large enough to entertain him and he needs to get used to being inside it if they will have babies to attend to. I bought them a couple new toys to help. We hope he will settle down once he gets a chance to start incubating the eggs. He does seem to spend more time in the box with her, but if he's not napping or chewing on the wood from the inside, he gets bored and comes right back out again.
Clarice coming out for some food and exercise
They also keep the box very clean. Being new parents, I had some concern about this and had been checking the box more often to be able to clean up any messes that might be made. I soon found however that they are perfectly conscious of keeping the box clean themselves!
3-15-09:
Clarice laid her third egg early this morning. We also noticed today that ever time Clarice comes out of the box, Petri goes in and stays there with the eggs until she comes back. We hope this is a sign that he will be a good parent as well.
Petri peeking into the box while I'm checking on the eggs' progress
Today I noticed that they have been pushing one of their eggs out of the group. When I look in on Clarice, she is sitting on two of the eggs and the largest third egg is not under her but rather pushed out to the side. It was the second egg laid. I'm not sure if she thinks there is something wrong with it because it is slightly larger than the others or what is going on. I hope they know what they are doing! I have tried to push the egg back into the bunch when they leave the nest, but even after rotating the eggs and trying to put the larger one in different places each time, they continue to separate it out.
We candled it later on tonight and saw that it is in fact fertile, so I hope they take good care of it! I would rather they take care of it than have to incubate it myself...we'll see I guess!
Both being protective of their eggs
Clarice had a total of 5 eggs! She and Petri are great parents. He is still being the watch dog and she sits on the eggs for the majority of the time both during the day and at night. He is actually spending more time in the box with her. He also continues to go into the box whenever she comes out for a break and some food. I found in checking on them that when ever Petri is in the box with her, she lets him sit on one or two of the eggs!
They actually divide up the clutch so they can both sit on some. This behavior is actually a bit strange, but it seems to work for them! To my surprise, it turned out that the large egg she continued to push out was the one she was letting Petri sit on. Hopefully this says good things for this little baby and at least it seems to be taken care of more than I initially thought.
3-20-09:
Clarice has finally decided that she likes water! I had been misting the nest a bit each day to keep a bit of humidity in it, but she decided to start taking baths now. She didn't used to like water, but hopefully she will keep this up and it will help the babies hatch properly!
3-30-09:
Nothing really new, but we are getting excited for the babies to arrive!! By my calculations it should be around the 6th that they hatch if all goes well. I've started getting things together for when I will be hand-feeding them and have been talking to a few people about purchasing the babies when they are ready to go. Things are looking good and hopes are high!
See the broken egg shell!
I realized that I had not seen either of them out of the box all morning and decided to investigate...
Surprise!!!
