Shiv, Uma and family are doing well. (Who are Shiv and Uma?)
Now the chicks have grown in size and are changing their color from snow white to grey. Small wings are also now visible. Since there is an age difference of two days between them, the difference in their sizes is clearly apparent. They have already abandoned the nest and are seen roaming around in the area under the watchful eyes of their parents. Shiv and Uma no longer give us any threatening calls when I am in that area for my walks or photo shoots. They just issue a call perhaps to alert their young ones to camoflouage themselves with the landscape and lie motionless. What intrigues me is that both the chicks are never near each other. They are usually 50-100 meters apart from each other. Is it a safety device that in case of attack from a predatory skua at least one survives? However, I think it is to save the smaller chick from the bigger one. It is well known in many bird species that the elder chick throws away the younger chick out of the nest on a tree, or kills the smaller one to finish competition for food. After all the animal kingdom strictly follows survival of the fittest.
By the way, any suggestions for names for the chicks?
3 comments:
Can you post pictures on your blog? That would make your posts much more interesting to a general audience.
lekhni, thanks for your note. Its usually impossible to post precise pictures next to blog entries (since dr khandelwal can only upload text emails from Antarctica on a daily basis). However in this case I was able to dig up some old pics of the skuas that he had sent home over snail mail.
Heh Heh Heh
Ganesha and Karthik?
I know, not very original but very appropriate :-)
mytri from PA
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