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Still Prioritising the Birds
May 1 is near; please keep feeding the birds
Today while chasing news links and writing some notes (articles early in the morning, again in the evening) the bird "Bottle" - or "Bot" for short - kept showing up very often, afterwards with the friend, who has no name (can be recognised by proximity to "Bot", they each take one doorknob to stare at me and ask for seeds from the glass jar). It turns out the friend is in fact the partner because they 'kissed' today. That happened several times. Minutes later it was obvious who was male and who was female (we never knew the gender of "Bot") because the partner jumped on her. We already suspected that "Bot" was female based on behaviour and relative body size, but now it is official. Lately we've also been feeding "Sleepy", who likes to sleep very near, either on a hanging clay vase or the basket with coconut body. "Sleepy" looks for shelter, not food.
There are other couples of birds and it'll become obvious over time which ones are males and which are the females. More so now because of the mating season.
We sometimes write about birds (they are also the mascot of the site) because they are like free-range pets to us and we keep a lot of premium seeds for them in store. Our government advised taking a break from feeding birds between May 1 and some time in October, but we'll feed them as usual. There are contradictory accounts from bird experts (several independent ones sent me E-mails about it this month) and we have a sneaking suspicion that this advice is tied to worries about crop shortages (due to the war that lowers availability of much-needed fertiliser). █
Image source: Owl with Two Owlets Sitting on Branch