There's good news and bad news regarding the kestrel. The bad news is that I candled the eggs we "rescued" from the nest box and they proved to be not viable. My theory is that when the female died the period of nonincubation was too long and they just didn't develop.
The good news is that the male found another mate and they have once again taken up residence in the nest box.
Meanwhile, since I now have the incubator I decided to try and hatch a couple of chicken eggs. It seems like not too long ago I had an overabundance of chickens. Then through one happenstance or the other, eventually I just had an overabundance of roosters. So we took care of that and now it is one rooster with five hens.
I put four eggs in the incubator. I know for sure that two of them are good. I'm not too sure about the other two.
Right now I'm going to take the chance that the other two are still good and won't explode into a stinky mess rather than destroy them and find out they were good after all. Chicken eggs take 21 days to hatch, so we may have Cinco de Mayo chicks. Stay tuned!
Here are a couple pictures of one of the kestrels. Or maybe one of each?
3 comments:
Sorry about the eggs, and what did I say, MEN I knew
he would find a new squeeze! Hopefully they will do better! Cinco de Mayo, little mini tender fajitas!! :0)
AND that garden of yours beautiful, Nothing of mine is over about 6 inches! My one little blueberry has a load on it though!
Patti
Wow, what an interesting story. Sorry to hear they weren't viable, but then again, like you said, what on earth would you do with them when they hatched?!
I am assuming that Kestrels are carnivores, but I am wondering if they are a type or hawk or just a meat eating bird.
Thanks for sharing, and they are beautiful birds!!
~M~
Thanks, you guys! Patti, I'm jealous of your blueberries. I tried once with some so-called "heat tolerable" blueberries. They weren't. And ~M~ according to Wikipedia kestrels are a type of falcon and they eat small rodents, lizards, and large insects. We've seen them eating lots of lizards and I think in that picture he's got a small mouse!
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