So this evening I walked into the bird room and discovered Henry trying to sit on an egg that was lying on top of the big cage's playtop. I'm not sure whose egg it is but I think it's most likely Ladybug's so I put it in her nest. If a pied chick hatches out of it I'll know that I guessed right.

The egg probably does not belong to Prissy, Teela or Shodu, but there's a good chance that it could belong to Ladybug, Mims, or Snowy. But all three of them (and Shodu too for that matter) usually signal me when they want to leave the birdroom and go back to the nest, and nobody gave the signal.

I changed the paper on the playtop yesterday so I know the egg couldn't have been there longer than about 24 hours at the most. The paper has been ripped up some since then and could have partially hidden the egg for a while, but I don't think the egg was there for very long. There's a lot of activity on the playtop so it wouldn't have taken much time for someone to find it, and the whole flock thinks eggs are fascinating so I would have seen somebody messing with it much sooner if it had been laid yesterday or this morning. It had been there long enough to get cold though.

are all your females breeding at the moment with nest boxes and everything?

What colour tiel is a pied?
I cant get the hang of all these colours!
I just look at a bird and think, that's for me!

Jan, the cockatiel in your signature is a pied! So is Pip in my signature, and Geezer the unidentified bird arguing with Vlad in the center. A pied bird has yellow/white feathers in areas that would normally be grey, but usually still has some grey feathers too. When a genetically pied bird doesn't have any grey feathers at all it's called a clear pied.

Shodu, Ladybug, Mims and Snowy have nestboxes and eggs. Teela and Prissy do not.

The mystery has deepened. I don't think it can be Ladybug's egg after all, since she laid an egg during the night and also laid one on April 17. I thought it was hers since she was due to lay one yesterday around midday and nothing showed up in the nest.

I wonder if it's Shodu's after all. She was due to lay an egg on April 17 and didn't, and I thought she had stopped laying eggs with a clutch of only 3. She's getting older (she's 9) so her fertility might be on the decline. But she laid an egg during the night too. Hens can lay eggs that close together sometimes when the first one is delayed. She's never gone four days between eggs before, but declining fertility could explain that too. I don't know if she laid two eggs very close together or if she just had a big gap between #3 and #4. She has laid eggs on the playtop before but she usually sits tight on them. Since she wasn't sitting on this one it's an argument against it being hers.

If it was hers it would help explain why Henry was all over it - he wants to be her lover and sticks close to her when she's in the bird room, and would have known that she laid it. But I think he would be all over any egg that he found. It was funny watching him try to sit on it. The playtop is a flat surface so the egg kept rolling out every time he tucked it between his legs.

Mystery egg! I love it! I also love picturing Henry trying to carefully sit on the egg. I hope it hatches. If it's from one of your normally non-breeding hens, how would you know?

Edit: I'm also pleased to hear that there will be more Coyote siblings out there. I realize he has lots out there from previous years but you know what I mean.

Congratulations on the mystery egg!

Snowy has been ruled out as a suspect since she laid an egg this morning and also laid one two days ago. Mims could have done it, but she was in her nest most of the day and when she did come out it was voluntary so it doesn't seem too likely. I hope it wasn't Teela since her mate is her brother, but they were across the room acting like they didn't know the egg was there and that's not how they usually act with eggs. It seems most likely that it was Shodu, so if this egg turns out to be fertile I'll let it hatch and hope for the best. It's a gamble though. If it turns out to be infertile it was probably Mims.

I candled all the eggs this morning. It's too soon to tell with the youngest eggs, but Shodu and Ladybug each had three that were fertile. As expected, Mims and Snowy's eggs were all infertile. Letting them lay eggs is part of the process of letting them have a motherhood experience. I'd really prefer that they didn't, but it's necessary to help them get ready to raise foster babies.

This is all beyond me. I hope the egg hatches though!
Peach laid an egg over the weekend. I left it in her cage until she lost interest in it and then removed it. Off course it was not fertile.

I'm actually hoping that the egg is infertile. Then I won't have to worry about whether it's really an incest egg from Teela and Squeebis. But if it's a fertile egg from Buster and Shodu it would be a terrible shame to throw it away and that's why I'm keeping it.