This morning I found a tiny fledgling dead on the grass beneath our
street tree. I believe it had only recently fledged. HANZAB states
that fledgling occurs at 15 days and after 15 -16 days they begin to
sit on twigs near nest returning to nest at night. Three to four
days later they leave nest tree. Spend next few days on ground under
shelter of dense growth. My guess is this little one met its fate
yesterday while branch sitting during gusty winds and died in the hot sun.
John et al,
I can't exactly tell you timings, as it was 15 feet up our
Pittosporum in the back yard and I couldn't tell when they hatched,
but I can confirm that our breeding pair and their fledglings behaved
slightly differently to that..... the one or two (once there were 3
of them) youngsters would sit on a hoizontal branch not far from the
nest, them mum and dad would sit at each end to protect them. By
this stage they were pretty much perfect copies of their parents, but
about 2/3 the size, and oh so cute. Unfortunately we always saw them
just on sunset and I could never get good enough light for a photo as
it was the prettiest picture. They would only sit there as night was
falling, then would sit there overnight, not returning to the
nest. We never observed the young during the day, but they appeared
on that particular branch in the evening. We only ever saw them a
couple of days maximum, but each time we would always see them for a
day or two after they left the nest.... then a couple of weeks later
the parents would be nesting again.
The Pittosporum was cut down to about 5 feet tall recently, so I have
suspicions that the parents may now be nesting somewhere up in our 35
- 40 foot tall Magnolia soulangeana (no, I am not exaggerating, it IS
somewhere around that size) in the back yard. We here them courting
up there at times. I still have the nest from when I cut down the
Pittosporum, and given how it started out the first nesting as about
a dozen twigs that looked like they shouldn't even hold any eggs....
it ended up 3 inches thick and a solid construction by the time they
had used it half a dozen times or more. The interesting thing about
the nest is that it has a perfectly flat top, just like the original
twigs they start with. They have obviously never worked out that an
indentation would hold the eggs. I have absolutely no idea how the
eggs stay in the nest, as there appears to be nothing stopping them
from rolling off the top. Maybe the eggs have anti-gravity
capabilities. <grin>
Anyway, just some observations from our Crested Pigeon breeding pair,
to add to yours (in case anyone has any vague interest). I hope this
isn't too boring for too many of the members.
Cheers.
Paul T.
Higgins, ACT
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