Broody behaviour

Ground can't hold any more water...!

It's been raining like mad here, but our little mother Snowpea is still heroically sitting on her eggs despite over 40mm of rain in less than 24 hours - luckily she is on relatively high ground, or she would be under water.

Snowpea: "here I sit and here I stay"

Last year we put up temporary shelters around the nests so the sitting birds would stay dry, but this year Snowpea has chosen a nest site pressed up tight against the net, and we can't put anything around her to protect her. She's gone broody very early in the season, so the weather is still quite unsettled. We're a bit worried she'll catch cold, but we are feeding her extra meal-worms, as well as grains and a bit of vitamin powder in her drinking water. We'll just have to see how it goes. We think she has another week, or a bit more, before hatching. Last year all our chicks hatched at 17-18 days, but we don't know exactly when Snowpea started sitting.
She is still super-aggressive with all the other birds, whenever she comes off the nest to eat, and gives a strange guttural "chuck-chuck" call while flying at anyone who comes near, and pecking at them viciously.

Bald patches on Melon's head...we think Fog has been exercising his conjugal rights too frequently

We have a second nest in a clump of grass, being slowly filled with eggs, but we suspect it may be a communal nest, and none of the other birds are yet broody. It's hard to tell. Melon was showing some signs of broody behaviour, but the weather may have stopped her sitting. Melon co-parented with Snowpea last year, with the two of them successfully raising all Snowpea's chicks together, in a pattern of shared parenting we'd never heard of before.
Melon has paired off with one of our remaining males - Fog - and the two of them appeared to have made the nest, and were always close by, but we could never actually catch her laying. Eggs appeared, first 2, 3, 4, then a wait, then there were 6, then 8, and now 11. We think another bird is laying there as well. Melon has become quite aggressive, and solitary, and we thought sitting might be imminent. Then the rain started - and the nest is very low-lying - at one point some of the eggs were floating!

Melon doing her best to keep all her 11 eggs together...but failing.

Today we checked again and Melon was doing her best to sit, but 11 eggs were too much for her, some were knocked out and rolled down the slope whenever she fluffed up and changed position. When we touched them all were cold - despite her sitting on them - and the nest itself was soaking wet - the eggs were lying on wet soil, and she couldn't get them warm. So after some debate, we collected them all. We hope she'll make another nest in a better location, and start again...

Quail egg omelette for dinner tonight