FINCHforum

I woke up to a surprise this morning--a single new RCCB baby! Sally came over and banded it for me.
What is amazing is we moved this family last weekend into a new Prevue F030 so the 2 families would have their own cage. The OC babies fledged last weekend. And I checked the nest and saw eggs but not a baby. I laid out the new cage almost exactly like the old cage and placed the RCCB nest in the same location. It was a miracle that it made it thru all that and the Parents continued to take care of the baby.

It's siblings are doing fine.

Trisha
WOW....incredible! Great job!!! Congrats on the new baby. Your baby blues are beautiful!!!!!

What a nice surprise!

This was a total surprise, as just one week ago, I was at Trisha's house to band the Orange Cheek Waxbill babies, and at that time, we moved the RCCB family into a new cage. Can you imagine that a baby sat still inside that nest while we moved parents, two siblings from a prior clutch, and the nest itself into another cage? Plus we caught the OCW babies to be banded. Lots of commotion!

Trisha put the nest into the same location in the new cage, but I was absolutely amazed that RCCB parents would keep on feeding a baby that was one-week away from fledging! For RCCBs to parent-raise in a cage is an accomplishment in itself, and many parents will abandon a single baby, thinking it is too much work to feed just one baby. And most parents would never tolerate a move like that. The fact that this all happened with a pair of (probably) wild-caught RCCBs is almost incomprehensible!! Kudos to Trisha, she is obviously doing something right!!

Trisha

Congratulations × three.

Is he from the same clutch, or did they sneak another egg in there at some point?

Thanks everyone!

Elana.. this new baby is younger than my older RCCB babies.. they fledged on Jan 10 I believe. This one was quite a surprise!

Trisha

Oh ok, so he was one of those surprise "woops" egg babies, when the parents look at each other and shrug. I'm glad they raised him into this handsome fledhgling

a_gouldian Sally

As hard as I've read they are to breed!.. Wow! And after such a move. You must have been very careful in keeping everything just right when you set up the second cage the same way. You fooled the birds! Woo hoo!

Babs, I tried really hard to set everything up the same.. but I didn't think I would be so lucky!