At 17:28 30/09/1999 +0930, you wrote:
>While appreciating the wry humour of your message, I'm genuinely puzzled
>that you would expect a 2-day old chick to survive outside its nest,
>with or without parental help. Was this a typo for "a couple of weeks"?
>
>> v. young Masked Lapwing chick, only a couple of days old.
>>
>
>Cheers (!)
>Anne
>
Hi Anne
Thanks for the message and the query.
The reason I thought this, and continue to hold the view, is that
Masked Lapwings have what are called "precocial chicks". Like the
domestic fowl, they hatch as fluffy balls of down and leave the
"nest" almost immediately, running around after their parents.
Certainly they are looked after by the
parents for weeks after, but not at a particular "nest site".
[The opposite of this is "altricial young", which hatch naked, eyes
closed, and remain in the nest for a couple of weeks].
Perhaps, in hind sight it might have been better to release the
chick on the roof-top where the nest was... but then I suspect the
reason it was found at all was because it had run off the edge of
the roof and fallen to the ground.
Overall the problem was poor nest site selection by the parents.
Lapwings protect their nest and young aggresively in open fields,
etc, but the thick shunery around the buildings meant that the
Grey Butcherbird had a chance to sneak up close.
Yours
Pete
Dr Peter Woodall email =
Division of Vet Pathology & Anatomy
School of Veterinary Science & An. Prod. Phone = +61 7 3365 2300
The University of Queensland Fax = +61 7 3365 1355
Brisbane, Qld, Australia 4072 WWW = http://www.uq.edu.au/~anpwooda
"hamba phezulu" (= "go higher" in isiZulu)
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