The two newly-mated society finches laid five eggs within a few days of first meeting each other. Augie, the bigger finch, took over sitting on the eggs 24/7. The new, smaller society named Anna wasn't allowed to sit on them any more. She moved to the double nesting house where she plugged one of the two doors completely shut with yarn. She sat looking out the other door. Nobody was sneaking in on her, by golly.
We waited two weeks or so, but no eggs hatched. Lucille took them out, opened them up and discovered they hadn't even started to develop. We think we've had that happen before to first-time would-be parents. Perhaps a subsequent clutch of eggs will be fertile and will hatch. It's been a couple weeks since and there are no new eggs yet. Seems the societies are in no hurry.
I'm wondering if we've got the sexes backwards. Lucille had the bigger bird for about a month during which it made sounds her other societies (girls) didn't make and it laid no eggs. So we assumed Augie was a male.
We introduced the new smaller bird and within a few days eggs appeared in the nesting house. We assumed Anna laid them. We assumed Augie's taking over the brooding was just him being over-excited about the whole thing. We've had male zebra finches chase their women back into the nest to sit on eggs as if the females weren't even allowed to take a second to eat, drink or stretch their legs. Psycho papa syndrome.
But what if the eggs came from Augie? What if the larger bird is the female, like is true with hummingbirds, for instance. What if it was a coincidence that the eggs appeared when a second bird was added? Lucille hasn't seen or heard them do a mating ritual, so we have no solid proof either way who is male or female or what! Only the societies know and they're not talking.
These two want nothing to do with the zebra finches. If a zebra wanders into their cage, the zebra gets chased out at once with great vigor. We'd read that societies were snoopy and would help brood and raise the babies of other birds. We've have no baby zebra finches since these societies came here, so we don't know if they'd do that, but it sure seems unlikely right now.
We'll have to wait and see who mounts who and if we get more eggs and if they hatch. Anna still has three head feathers sticking straight up. Augie is regrowing his tail feathers faster than she is. Let's hope she doesn't yank them out again.
