Friday, April 06, 2012

2nd batch of yellow-bellied

Just early this week, I found out that the 2nd batch of eggs have hatched. I took a peek into the nest, while perching precariously on the stool to reach the top of the clothesline.

Last week I found out that the mummy sunbird had already laid the eggs. Really tiny ones, like the size of my pinky nail. So I shouldn't have been surprised that the babies that came out were equally small.

But what left me staring into the nest were that they were orange in colour! I would have expected something like pale skin colour or brownish, closer to the colour of the adult.

In the furless orange colour, they looked like 2 micro roasted chicken. Just imagine a full size oven-glazed chicken, and shrink that 1000 times. So small you can pop them into your mouth like a pill.

Since it's a hanging pouch-like nest, it was quite difficult to try to get a picture of the birds inside. Unless I shrink my camera to micro size too.

Just today I visited the nest again, and was surprised they'd grown quite significantly. I'm guessing they double their size every day. I didn't know feeding on nectar can do such wonders.

No more micro roasted chicken, now they're growing a bit of dark fur and is probably the size of my thumb. They look like they can't open their eyes yet, so when I go near, they can't really see me! >.<

2 comments:

LY Leong said...

lucky u didn't really pop them into ur mouth like a pill :)

§nóflèk said...

heheh.. even if i wanted to, it's kinda late. they're almost grown up now! can you believe it.. its only 2 weeks and they're about to fly out!!