I have been planning to let my societies have a clutch of babies for a while. I ordered a nest basket online, as I didn't have any on hand. In the week it took to arrive, however, Mr. and Mrs. Society decided that a spider plant hanging in one of my windows was a great nest, and Mr. Society dutifully gathered every dead leaf, bit of lint, dried piece of salad and loose feather he could to make a hideous, stinky little nest of garbage set on the potting soil under the plant's leaves for his bride, who thought the whole thing was perfect and today laid an egg in there, right on the dirt.
But today the real nest came. I wanted the finches to use this, because their current nest is not only unsanitary, but will flood when I water the plant! I hung the nest in one of the open cages they routinely enter to eat and drink from, set some loose paper strips and the egg in there, and took away their yucky spider plant nest, also moving the plant out of their range. And waited.
For hours I waited. The finches didn't even look at the new nest. Instead, they flew around where their hanging basket was, searching for a house that had vanished into thin air. The male, my little Apollo, carried paper to the spot only to hold it in his bill plaintively looking around until he remembered there was nowhere to put it there and drop it. And he repeated this until a pile of paper had collected on the floor below. So I decided they would have to be pushed a little to accept the new abode in favor of their garbage plant nest. When Mr. and Mrs. Society entered the cage, I shut the door.
And waited.
And waited.
Evening came, and not only did the finches never even look at the new nest where their egg was waiting, they acted as if it was a monster and perched as far from it as possible. This was bad, because if the hen is already laying, she might drop her egg tomorrow on the perch and break it. I couldn't fathom why they wouldn't even utilize this nest for sleeping, the kind they used in the past and never minded.
As darkness settled, on a whim, I moved the nest from one side of the cage to the other.
And no sooner was my hand out of the cage that both finches had jumped in to roost for the night, sitting on their egg.
They just didn't like it on the right side!
