Rifleman Series: Part 5 - Hatching

When a bird is too big for their shell, they start to push their heads and legs upwards and outwards. Hearing eggs cracking is probably analogous to hearing human babies crying as they’re born. Although hatching is a sound that is barely audible, especially for a small bird with small eggs like the tītipounamu. In November, the first chicks start to break out of their shell. They are close-eyed, featherless, and a bundle of sweetness. They move clumsily and are helpless at everything a bird should do. When a bird hatches from its egg, it’s called a hatchling or a nestling.

The parents stay in the nest a couple of days more to keep them warm as they have not developed feathers yet. But a couple of days later as they grow bigger and are covered in fat, the parents will not fit in the nest anymore and so they would only perch for a few seconds at the entrance of the nest just to feed the chicks. Although, many pairs are still incubating and helpers start to scout around nests that they should help with. Single males or females, often relatives of a pair, benefit from helping others in the sense that they are allowed to forage in their home range. I have seen a single male appearing at many nests, even one where the female used to chase him away. But since she sees him feeding her chicks, she tolerated him.

The nestlings will soon discover their own voice. And they will start using it more and more. As a nestling and later as a juvenile out of the nest, they vocalize in broadband frequencies, which means instead of sounding like ‘sss’, they sound more like ‘shh’. And somehow this makes it harder for predators to pinpoint their exact location. Whenever an adult arrives at the nest with food, the clutch will go crazy begging loudly to be fed. Most nestlings of birds have a bright yellow gape on the sides of their beak to direct the adults where to stuff food in. This is especially useful when the nest is in a dark spot like inside a tree hole.

I got very excited when I find that, one by one, the nests we have been monitoring are starting to hatch. I noted down meticulously the days when I first started hearing begging calls and recorded more information about how often the adults feed at the nest, the size of food they bring and how the nestlings sound like. They have several types of calls when they are in the nest. It is so mysterious but engaging at the same time, because I couldn’t see what is happening inside the tree hole, but I could hear and document the evidence of these new born...data points! *evil smile*

In the next month, the babies will finally leave the nest and learn to fend for themselves. In the next post on the 13th of February 2019, I will talk about the challenge to stay alive as a tītipounamu youngster in a harsh bird neighbourhood.