Sad aviary news :( (Patreon)

I haven't given updates lately about my own aviary, but I just need to share this here as it made me very sad this morning.

A few weeks ago, I discovered that the Bourke parakeets couple that can be seen on the image above, had laid 6 eggs! From those 6, 3 hatched last week and they were all doing very well the days following. Now this morning when doing a check if everything was still ok, I found out that 2 of the 3 baby birds had died. I think they died of the cold as a few days back the temperature was like 24 degrees celsius and yesterday it was snowing.
Also when taking a closer look after removing them from the nest box, I saw that one of them still had food in it's crop. 

For the people not knowing, The crop is a muscular pouch located in a bird's neck above the top of the chest. Baby birds use this crop to storage food prior to digestion. Adult birds can use it to make crop-milk for their baby birds.

As baby birds don't have that many feathers, you can see through this part of the thin skin. And in there I saw food which makes me think that starvation was not the reason for the baby birds to die.

Luckely one baby bird did survived, but I'm not sure if it will stay alive without it's siblings as they keep each other warm when their mother is going out for a stretch or to eat.

So I hope I can share some good news later of a healthy growing baby bird. :)