Imagine trying to keep your children warm on a cold night by hugging them to the outside of your winter coat. They will still be cold unless you open your coat and hug them to your skin.

Birds incubate their eggs and brood their chicks by “opening their coats� to keep their children warm.

Feathers are great insulation so during the nesting season birds must develop a bare patch of skin — a brood patch — to allow the eggs to come in direct contact with their bellies.  The brood patch also has extra blood vessels close to the skin to heat the eggs.   At the end of the nesting season the blood vessels recede and the feathers grow back to keep the adult warm.

In species where only the female incubates, the male doesn’t develop a brood patch.  Male and female peregrines both have brood patches because they share incubation.

If you watch the streaming webcams you’ll see the adult peregrines rock side-to-side as they settle on the nest.  This rocking opens the feathers that have curled over the brood patch and puts their skin in contact with the eggs or chicks.

Shown here is a brood patch on a female American kestrel, North America’s smallest falcon.  The person holding the bird reveals the brood patch and the downy black feathers surrounding it by blowing upward on the bird’s belly. 

Imagine how cold a brooding falcon can get in an updraft!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_XpmkcoIY8

OK, they finally got it right:

Nest News 2010

2010 April 23 - Two more eggs are now in the nest. They were laid on April 17 and 18 respectively. The female has hunkered down and rarely leaves the nest, but the male has been spotted delivering food.

(movie) Hey, this is how my page loads sometimes, looking at the task bar. Then it just hangs up there...

Is Archer rubber-necking?

(movie)

This may have been posted eons ago - it's not that new. My dad got it on email; it was a bit too cool for comfort, so I checked it with Snopes, and it's on the level. Again, apologies if it's old news to everyone but me.
http://www.snopes.com/photos/natural/maiken.asp

I've seen that on TV...it's incredible how many Islands are made that way...COOL dale.

[It's hard to tell what they are thinking as this is the first time this situation is seen, to my knowledge. I'll try to answer your questions from what I have seen and what I think is going on.Polly is not incubating the eggs although it seems like she tried a couple of times. She just likes the box to have a nap in the sunshine and the warm rocks ! She has been doing it through the winter. I thought that her parents would chase her off when egg laying started but it was not the case. Mom is not afraid of her - I have seen her get Polly out of there on a few occasions in the past. You can also see when they are together that Polly has her head lower than Spirit when they bow to each other, it means that Spirit is still the boss. Also, Spirit has no problem getting other females out of the territory, so if she wanted to she could do it with Polly quite easily. When Spirit leaves the nest, it's because she has been sitting there for several hours and wants to go out and stretch, thinking that Roger would take over. This is where the problems start - Roger, of course he's way smaller and can't win a fight against Polly. But again there is no fight, when they are together in the box it's clear that Roger is not afraid of her, she's just annoying him and that's why sometimes she prevents him from doing his job. However most of the time he manages to sit on the eggs.This morning I think Spirit was out hunting when the eggs were uncovered for a long period of time, as she came back to the box with a prey. Otherwise she would have told Polly to get out after a while.So obviously, both parents have decided to accept Polly as part of their life for now.Also, it is clear to me that Polly is now able to hunt on her own. I have seen her disappear for a few days, and come back to the tower with a full crop when both her parents have been there for a while.Now I don't know whether the time without incubation will be fatal to the embryos. I certainly hope not as I am very curious to see Polly's reaction when/if we have chicks.]

I wrote to Eve from Montreal and here's what she has to say about Polly Pockets.


It's hard to tell what they are thinking as this is the first time this situation is seen, to my knowledge. I'll try to answer your questions from what I have seen and what I think is going on.

Polly is not incubating the eggs although it seems like she tried a couple of times. She just likes the box to have a nap in the sunshine and the warm rocks ! She has been doing it through the winter. I thought that her parents would chase her off when egg laying started but it was not the case. Mom is not afraid of her - I have seen her get Polly out of there on a few occasions in the past. You can also see when they are together that Polly has her head lower than Spirit when they bow to each other, it means that Spirit is still the boss. Also, Spirit has no problem getting other females out of the territory, so if she wanted to she could do it with Polly quite easily. When Spirit leaves the nest, it's because she has been sitting there for several hours and wants to go out and stretch, thinking that Roger would take over. This is where the problems start - Roger, of course he's way smaller and can't win a fight against Polly. But again there is no fight, when they are together in the box it's clear that Roger is not afraid of her, she's just annoying him and that's why sometimes she prevents him from doing his job. However most of the time he manages to sit on the eggs.

This morning I think Spirit was out hunting when the eggs were uncovered for a long period of time, as she came back to the box with a prey. Otherwise she would have told Polly to get out after a while.

So obviously, both parents have decided to accept Polly as part of their life for now.
Also, it is clear to me that Polly is now able to hunt on her own. I have seen her disappear for a few days, and come back to the tower with a full crop when both her parents have been there for a while.

Now I don't know whether the time without incubation will be fatal to the embryos. I certainly hope not as I am very curious to see Polly's reaction when/if we have chicks.


It was nice of her to write back so quickly. I hope these eggs hatch. Polly means no problems, she's just being a kid.

Thank you Bobbie! There may be hope yet!

[So am I...I just don't get it! FREE SPEECH...MY ...]

Why is distribution of child porn illegal but this is not? I'm confused by this. ???

Cindy

So am I...I just don't get it! FREE SPEECH...MY ... What's this world coming to. 

Polly still there! Do these eggs even have a chance? Why can't mom or dad make her move, at least away from the nest? Could they be afraid of her? I don't get it.

Double 

[Court ruling sparks animal cruelty concerns]

Court ruling sparks animal cruelty concerns

SUBURBAN WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- They're called "crush" videos. Images depict women in high heels crushing and mutilating small animals to give viewers a thrill.


Such videos and images were considered illegal until a U.S Supreme Court ruling this week, which found them to be a form of free speech protected by the first amendment. WHAT, ARE THEY NUTS!

"It's one of the worst things you could ever watch," says Capt. Dave Walesky with Palm Beach County Animal Care and Control.

Walesky says there are laws on the books locally to prevent acts of cruelty in our area. But law enforcement had always depended upon the federal law to deal with people trying to sell images of those cruel acts.

"From what I'm being told from local law enforcement sources, there are people in Palm Beach County that are involved in this," says Walesky.

Given the court's ruling, Walesky and other animal control officials from around the state now plan to use a meeting they'd already scheduled for Friday in Polk County to discuss pushing for a state law banning such videos.  "The content of these is so horrific, that freedom of speech shouldn't even be an issue," says Walesky.

The high court case dealt with a Virginia man named Bob Stevens, who characterizes the videos as educational.

Free speech advocates like West Palm Beach civil liberties attorney James Green say while they don't condone what Stevens does, the court's 8-1 ruling was correct. "The court held that the reach of this law was just way too broad. It was not limited and could not be limited to just crush videos," says Green.

In response, local animal rights advocates say they'll join the Humane Society in its effort to pass a  more-narrowly-worded law specifically targeting such videos.

In the meantime, they fear that without such legislation cases of animal cruelty will increase. "'Because we can no longer rely on the federal law," says Walesky.

 

This is just sick. In the video, they show women in high heels playing with the baby rabbits and kittens with their foot....then well you know the rest. What's wrong with the system??   

Well Polly is back and just as she came in, mom took off. Now Polly is just laying in the nest next to the eggs. Wonder if this will impact hatching.

Beauty's back and the eggs are lovely
Sorry Archer, your 90 minutes are up

Zebra finches breed in colonies and each pair cares for their own offspring. However, brood parasitism within the same species is relatively common, in captive populations as well as in the wild in Australia. Scientists of the Max Planck Institute in Seewiesen studied the parentage of all eggs in a captive population with genetic methods and found out that in every 20 eggs there was one "cuckoo egg". Mostly the same females specialize in outsourcing parental work of some of their eggs. It is interesting that they combine brood parasitism with laying and raising their own clutches - a purely parasitic strategy was not found.

The female cuckoo-zebra finches have to time the egg-laying to a host nest very precisely: the incubation starts usually shortly after laying the first or second egg. When the parents are already sitting on their nest, it is hardly possible to foist a cuckoo egg on them. But if the female drops the egg too early to a host's nest, the latter might abandon the nest. Captive conditions in the aviaries made thorough studies of the chronology of egg laying easier for the scientists: "Most of the cuckoo eggs show up in the host’s nest shortly before the host parents start breeding," says Holger Schielzeth, first author of the study. "That shows that the "cuckoo-females" seem to monitor the neighbours' breeding start". The researchers found no cues that the cuckoo females target specific host pairs. More the opposite was the case: a host pair was rarely hit a second time. That is a sign that host parents learn to defend themselves.

Cuckoo females usually lay more than one egg in host nests, but most of the time only one in each nest and shortly before they start laying their own clutches. However the cuckoo strategy is not as successful as it might sound: "Just one third of the eggs are finally being reared by foster parents", says Holger Schielzeth. "Females employing a mixed brood strategy lay more eggs but end up with as many fledglings as females with a pure brood strategy". If the brood parasitism would be a more successful strategy, the development of a pure cuckoo-specialist within the zebra finches would probably have evolved.



 PhysOrg.com) -- Some female zebra finches foist a part of their eggs on their neighbours. Scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen discovered that in every fifth nest there is one egg that is not produced by its social parents. The female birds act in a very well-targeted way: eggs are being placed in "foster-care" shortly before the hosts commence their own egg laying (online publication in Animal Behaviour, April 15, 2010).