Parental egg destruction - Part 4: The no-frills nesting box just wasn't good enough for Lady CN?

Jalan Bunga Raya translated to English, is 'Hibiscus Street'. It is a minor street flanked on both sides by old shop houses. Like everywhere else in Malacca, there is no big red flowers to be seen here. No hibiscus flowers, no hibiscus leaves and not even a twig of hibiscus for a clue as to why it is the national flower and the name of this street. Instead, the street abounds with push-cart stalls, many of them peddling Chinese cooling teas (liang teh). Perhaps, one day when Mr Yuppie Yap becomes the governor here, he would change the name of this street to 'Herbal Tea Avenue', or something like that.

Besides the herbal teas, there are quite a few shops here selling a variety of artificial plants and flowers and they were the reason we came. Surprisingly, even these shops do not carry anything that resembles the hibiscus. Anyway, we did not come here to look for the national flower. We bought a cluster of artificial foliage that were meant to look like bamboo leaves. For good measure, we  took a small bunch of purplish silk flowers as well.

Back at my place that afternoon, we stapled the artificial leaves and flowers onto the nesting box, being careful to arrange them in such a way as to leave enough space for an entrance to allow the parent birds to comfortably access the nest inside but otherwise, the leaves were roughly arranged to criss-cross over the top of the nest, like a natural cover over it. This also further darkened the entire nesting area. 

The next morning, on 17th March 2014, when Lady CN was done laying her second egg of the clutch, she emerged from the nest and for the first time, she did not carry the egg out with her. The third and final egg of the clutch was laid the following morning and she proceeded to incubate them from that day, just like any other well-behaved female shamas would.


Was it really that simple that the lady merely needs to be appeased with flowers and bamboo leaves or was there a more complex underlying explanation to the simple solution? I will never be sure.

Somehow, when I was staring into the nesting box on that day when the first egg of the clutch was destroyed, something in there told me that the no-frills nesting box may just not be adequate for this fussy hen.

...THE END