Monday 23 August 2010

Bird House Update

Visited my bird house yesterday. I have not been into the bird house for more than 2 months. The last time I was there, I saw 1 full nest with baby birds, 1 half completed nest and 1 with extension work using the fake nest.

This time, I was happy to see some improvement to the bird house. There were about 5 completed bird nests and 1 half completed bird nest. 2 of the nests with baby birds hanging on them. I noticed that 1 of the bird nest is located at another corner of the bird house far from the other bird nests. I presume that this bird is from a different colony. If it is true, then my bird house has birds from 2 different colonies.

I know the result is still very slow compare with other bird houses but is a good start.

From what I learned, the number of bird nests in a bird house should have a multiplying effect. ie 2, 4, 8, 16, 32,... this is because the baby birds will usually make nest beside the parents nest. Each pair of bird can lay eggs up to 3 times a year and if the baby birds will mate after 6 months. Let us do the math below using 4 months laying eggs cycle and 8 months egg to adulthood cycle, the figure is something like this:

Month 1-4 ~ 1 nest
Month 5-8 ~ 1 nest
Month 9-12 ~ 2 nests
Month 13-16 ~ 3 nests
Month 17-20 ~ 5 nests
Month 21-24 ~ 8 nests
Month 25-28 ~ 13 nests
Month 29-32 ~ 21 nests
Month 33-36 ~ 34 nests
Month 37-40 ~ 55 nests
Month 41-44 ~ 89 nests
Month 45-48 ~ 144 nests
Month 49-52 ~ 233 nests
Month 53-56 ~ 377 nests
Month 57-60 ~ 610 nests

This calculation is for 1 pair of bird that flew into the bird house to start a family with the assumption that no baby birds fly away to stay in other bird houses. What happen if more than 1 pair of bird decided to migrate from other bird house to my bird house, the above figure should be double or triple:).

We must be have patient and make sure the bird house is always in good and comfortable condition so that no bird will want to migrate from the bird house. Not everyone is so lucky to have bird house that have 100s of nests within a year.

So for those that do not have many bird nests, the most important is to be patient but must always make sure that the number of nests is growing hopefully like the figure above else something is not right and action must be taken.

So at the mean time it is waiting again until the next visit

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