Chapter 97 Bald Eagle (Part 2)
Yu Yiyun's movements were restricted, and she used all her strength to roll herself under her brother's butt.
[get out.jpg]
However, the chicks, which have just hatched for two days, are not much bigger than the eggs. The warmth they can provide is limited after all, and is far from being as effective as hatching eggs of the same species.
Yu Yiyun, who was just a little bit away from becoming a living bead, couldn't care less.
The poor little Jiujiu tried his best to transform himself into an upgraded version of the ghost behind him, clinging to the baby bird's butt like a ghost.
The 'big' chick, which has been out of its shell for two days, does not seem to have the ability to move flexibly.
His butt was hurt, and he flapped his short wings to escape. But after struggling for a long time, he still couldn't escape the fate of being a male mother. He opened his mouth and let out a helpless cry, asking for help from the mother who was protecting the nest.
Yu Yiyun could feel the outside temperature through the eggshell.
Judging from my physical sense and experience, it is either spring or autumn.
For humans and most animals, these two seasons are neither too hot nor too cold, and the temperature is very comfortable.
However, for newly hatched chicks that have not yet grown feathers, the low temperatures in spring and autumn, occasionally accompanied by strong winds, can cause them to catch a cold if they are not in good physical condition.
Experienced mother bird will stay in the nest to provide warmth for her babies to defend against enemy birds and protect the chicks from freezing to death.
The female bird responsible for guarding the nest is obviously not breeding chicks for the first time.
Hearing the chick's cry, she instinctively thought that the baby was cold, so she spread her wings to hold him underneath, while also holding the eggs under the chick's butt.
Sensing the unhatched egg, the female bird seemed to hesitate for a few minutes before deciding to continue sitting on the nest.
Even though she knew that even if the little bird hatched, its chances of survival were slim.
Yu Yiyun, who was inside the eggshell, felt the warmth of the constant temperature of 37° again and breathed a sigh of relief.
Although I don’t know how many tests I will have to endure after breaking out of the shell, at least I won’t become a living bead~!
Through the hard eggshell, little Jiujiu first felt the huge size of the female bird.
Hatching eggs is a boring and long process. The mother bird changed her posture several times during the process, but her egg was still tightly held under her feathers.
Judging by the pressure the female imparted upon herself, she was definitely a large bird!
In Yu Yiyun's mind, ostriches, peacocks, penguins flashed across her mind...
Ostriches mainly live in Africa, and higher temperatures are needed to incubate their eggs. The current temperature is obviously not suitable.
Similarly, if you were a penguin egg, you would have fallen onto the ice and turned into a frozen egg in the few minutes before being incubated.
Yu Yiyun decisively ruled out the two options and thought naively and longingly: Am I a peacock?
Thinking of the peacock's extraordinary beauty and gorgeous and colorful tail feathers, Yu Yijun excitedly shook his tail hair, imagining himself spreading his tail in grand style.
As a result, the hair on its tail did not shake at all. Instead, it realized that its whole body was tightly wrapped by the egg membrane and the nutrients in the eggshell had been completely absorbed.
Yu Yiyun had never hatched peacock eggs, but she knew how chicken eggs were hatched.
After the bird eggs have been incubated for a certain number of days and the chicks have absorbed all the nutrients in the eggshells, they can try to peck at the shells!
Yu Yiyun was kept covered for several hours and felt his body temperature recover a lot. He gradually regained the strength to peck at the shell.
He grunted and pulled his head out from his curled-up body, then used the egg teeth that had grown out of his beak to knock hard against the eggshell wall.
Even though the chick's beak had an egg tooth that could break the eggshell, Yu Yijun knocked on it for a long time, but the eggshell was as firm as a copper wall and almost broke his important egg tooth.
Yu Yiyun retracted her beak in pain and tried to analyze her current situation.
Yu Yiyun's knowledge of poultry hatching was limited to chickens.
The free-range chickens fed to the South China tigers on the Qinling Mountains are all hatched by the rewilding team themselves... using incubators.
Usually, a chick about to hatch will first find the 'air cell' inside the eggshell, which is the part that is concave when the egg is boiled.
After pecking open the air chamber, the chicks can breathe outside air and will not suffocate to death.
Once there is enough oxygen, it will slowly start pecking the shell.
The position corresponding to the air chamber is often the 'big head' of the bird egg, the weakest part of the eggshell, which makes it easier for the young bird to break out of the shell.
Yu Yiyun's eyes were not open yet, so she could not see clearly where the air chamber was, so she had to use her egg teeth to feel around.
After a lot of trial and error, he finally came to the conclusion:
I seem to...
The fetal position is not correct QAQ...
At the end of the incubation period of most bird eggs, the air chamber is located on top of the chick's head, and the chick can peck open the membrane with its beak by raising its head.
Yu Yiyun was very unlucky, the gas chamber was actually behind her.
Unless you can turn your head 270 degrees, it is impossible to peck...
Wait, wait!
Yu Yiyun tried it without hope and was surprised to find that:
My head can really twist 270 degrees!!!
"???"
Yu Yiyun didn't bother to investigate further. With incredible dexterity, he twisted his neck three quarters of a circle and used his egg teeth to peck through the membrane of the air chamber.
Feeling the outside air rushing in, Xiao Jiujiu became messy.
If I remember correctly, the peacock's neck can only turn about 180 degrees in one direction.
If you don't have any special abilities, there's a 99.99% chance that you're not a peacock.
——What kind of bird am I?!
With the doubt that "I may not be a good bird", Yu Yiyun knocked everywhere with her egg teeth, looking for a place where the eggshell was thinner like knocking on a door.
After knocking so many times, he even wondered if he was a woodpecker.
After repeated diagnosis by the suspected woodpecker, Xiao Jiujiu finally found the weakest part of the eggshell at the large head.
OK, ready to get started!
No one can stop me from breaking out of my shell~!
He tapped the spot as a mark, then tried to retract his neck, then rushed forward, repeatedly hitting the eggshell out of instinct.
Using the dual effects of inertia and hard egg teeth, the eggshell quickly...
A small tooth mark appeared.
“…”
Yu Yiyun felt like crying but had no tears.
Although I don’t know what kind of bird it is, but the eggshell is so hard, it must be very nutritious.
From this, we can infer that our parent bird is most likely a bird of prey that often eats a lot of fish and meat to replenish its body, so the eggs it lays are rich in calcium.
Bird of prey.
Big fish and meat.
Hiss~
Thinking of this, Yu Yiyun, who was just a step away from starving to death, stood up again and frantically attacked the most vulnerable part of the eggshell.
Meanwhile, the female bird incubating the eggs was sitting or lying down and taking a nap.
Suddenly she felt movement under her butt. She immediately jumped away and retreated to the edge of the bird's nest, looking down at the bird's egg that had cracked into pieces.
Female bird: Am I so efficient in hatching eggs?
“Crack—”
With a crisp sound, Yu Yiyun finally pecked through the eggshell!
Little Chuchu, with a triangular piece of eggshell on his head, poked his little head out of the shell and happily said hi to the world.
He looked up at the sky, then down at the bird's nest, and suddenly discovered...
Okay, it's no different from being in an eggshell.
Newborn chicks are similar to human babies. They are born with their eyes closed and take a while to open them.
Even with their eyes open, the chicks have very poor vision, due to severe myopia and astigmatism.
As your body grows and your nervous system develops, your visual system continues to mature.
Poor little bird that just hatched from its shell, before it even opened its eyes to see the world, it was the first to receive a beating from the world.
The slightly larger chick nearby, driven by instinct, crawled in the dark towards the eggs and pecked the newborn chick with its sharp beak.
Fortunately, Yu Yiyun reacted quickly. She immediately retracted into the egg, put the triangular hat back on, and made the first chirp of a bird.
“Chirp!”
Help!
After hearing her own cry clearly, Yu Yiyun suddenly began to doubt the idea that "I am a bird of prey".
A bird of prey with such a harsh cry might as well be a Barbie doll.
Just as he was hiding in the eggshell and thinking about something, the sound of pecking at the shell came from another direction.
After pecking twice, the chick on the right suddenly started to attack the chick with a weaker voice.
In the wild, competition among bird chicks is fierce.
Especially when survival resources are limited, young birds must find ways to grab more living space.
Some birds will lay their eggs in other birds' nests, and the young birds will hatch before other birds' eggs.
The first thing to do after hatching is to push out all the parent eggs so that the foster parents can only feed themselves.
Some birds lay several eggs at a time. After the first egg hatches, they immediately and frantically attack their younger brothers and sisters, making them afraid to compete with them for food.
Worse still, it can kill smaller chicks.
Zoologists call it 'Cain Abel syndrome'.
It is obvious that Yu Yiyun was born in a highly competitive environment and was in a very disadvantageous position.
The eldest has started beating the second oldest, and I have just hatched.
The two slightly older baby birds were tired from fighting and opened their mouths wide to beg for food from their mother.
Seeing this, the gluttonous little Jiujiu immediately crawled out of the eggshell and opened its mouth wide to make a begging sound.
However, two slightly larger birds blocked her way, so Yu Yiyun could not see her mother, let alone the food.
Little Jiujiu came out feeling aggrieved, and while drying its feathers, it gnawed on the eggshells to supplement its calcium.
Unexpectedly, Yu Yiyun, who is in Mercury retrograde, seems to have used up all her good luck in this life today.
After the female bird fed her two slightly older cubs, she still had some food left over.
Newly hatched chicks are very hungry and can eat about 50% of their body weight in each meal. They need to eat five or six times a day.
However, judging from the size of the eggshell, the newborn chick weighs only about 100 grams at most.
Even after two days of growth, about a hundred grams per meal is enough.
Today, the male bird in charge of hunting had a good harvest and brought back a lot of food.
The female bird, holding a mouthful of meat, noticed the hungry third baby gnawing on the eggshells, flapped her wings and jumped next to him.
This female bird has rich feeding experience and knows that it is difficult to feed newborn chicks, especially those that have not yet opened their eyes.
The large beak and small beak must dock for a while before they match perfectly.
The female bird holds the meat paste in its mouth and approaches the cub, waiting for him to slowly learn how to eat.
But as soon as it approached, the baby bird seemed to have awakened some innate skill. It accurately took the meat from the female bird's mouth and swallowed it into its stomach, then opened its mouth again.
"Chirp! Chirp!"
The female bird heard her young begging for food and picked up another piece of meat to feed him.
Two slightly larger chicks lay beside their mother and snuggled up to each other.
'Cain Abel Syndrome' mainly occurs when there is great competitive pressure and the cubs are hungry for a long time.
When the young are full, they can live in peace in the nest for a short period of time.
Not only did they stay close to each other, they also did not stop their mother from feeding their little brother.
The female bird held the meat in its mouth and fed the bird mouthful after mouthful. The more she fed, the more she felt something was wrong.
She had incubated so many eggs that the rest of the newly hatched birds were full after just two or three bites of their first meal.
The baby bird in front of me has already eaten more than ten mouthfuls, and its crop is bulging, but it still opens its mouth wide to beg for food from its mother.
As the female bird was feeding her babies, she was worried that they would eat themselves to death.
Yu Yiyun knew that she was the smallest and it would be difficult for her to snatch food from her older brothers and sisters in the short term.
If the male bird does not bring back enough food for the next meal, it will go hungry, so of course it will eat more while there is meat.
Yu Yiyun begged for food frantically, as if he had never eaten in his life.
Halfway through his meal, he staggered to the edge of the bird's nest bowl, took some time to solve his metabolic problem, and then rolled back to continue begging for food.
Unlike mammals, birds have short intestines and digest food quickly, with food going in from the top and exiting from the bottom.
They can also store uneaten food in their crop and eat it when they are hungry.
The female bird fed her little son five times the amount of food as the chicks of the same age, and finally she showed some interest in stopping.
It's quiet, but not completely quiet.
After he had enough food and drink, he regained his strength and began to explore the world.
Newly born birds of prey are absolute pieces of junk. Not only are their eyes not open, but their claws, legs, and wings are all soft, and they are almost unable to move.
Yu Yiyun rolled around with her round body and bumped into two soft things.
He guessed that it was his brother or sister.
The temperature is not low today, but the wind is a bit noisy, and the little chirps are so cold that their ears are messy in the wind.
He found that his brothers and sisters were sleeping next to each other, so he unceremoniously dug a hole between them and squeezed himself in.
"Chirp~"Good night!
After sleeping for an unknown amount of time, Yu Yiyun opened her eyes again...
“Chirp!”
I can open my eyes!
Yu Yiyun, who opened her eyes for the first time due to the sound of birds, looked up and around, and found that the whole world seemed to be covered with a layer of frosted glass, and she could only see a general outline.
Even so, he could still see his brother and sister's gray heads, sparse hair, and big alien-like eyes through the 800x soft skin filter.
The sky, the sky is falling!
The cute penguin and beautiful peacock imagined by Yu Yiyun were reduced to ashes in an instant.
Seeing her brother and sister’s thin necks and big heads, Yu Yiyun couldn’t even guess what kind of bird they were.
Ugly duckling?
No, the ugly duckling can also become a swan.
Look at the hooked beaks of the older brother and sister. They don’t look like ducks at all. Instead, they look more like—
"Oh!"
The female bird that went out to forage returns with a clear and distant call.
It has a hooked beak, eagle eyes as sharp as torches, and a wingspan of two meters.
The sharp claws folded in front of the chest tightly grasped a fat sea fish.
Yu Yiyun saw the iconic white feathers on her mother's head through her blurry vision and finally figured out her own species.
The bald eagle is a bird of prey whose symbolic significance is greater than its own presence.
As early as the 18th century, the bald eagle appeared on the national emblem of the newly independent United States, becoming a symbol of the future superpower America.
However, the bald eagle, the national bird, does not enjoy national treasure treatment.
Before the independence of the United States, local Indians would decorate themselves with the feathers and claws of bald eagles.
Wearing white feathers and eagle claws on his head, it once became a classic Indian image.
After the independence of the United States, the entire country entered a stage of rapid development.
In order to achieve the goal of dominating the world as soon as possible, they pointed their hunting rifles at the national bird, citing the excuses that "bald eagles will affect fisheries" and "attack the elderly and children."
Because bald eagles are large in size, fly fast, and are conspicuous, they are used as natural targets in many training camps.
In the early 20th century, bald eagles were hunted in all 48 states of the United States.
In 1917, Alaska, which has the largest number of bald eagles, implemented a cash reward policy requiring citizens to shoot bald eagles.
By the middle of the century, hundreds of thousands of bald eagles were shot dead.
In addition to becoming a 'mobile practice target' for humans, the bald eagle's survival is facing an even more severe crisis.
After World War II, the United States recklessly used DDT as an insecticide, spraying it on rivers, farmlands, streets...
DDT contains dichlorophenyltrichloroethane, which interferes with the normal metabolism of female bald eagles, causing the eggs they lay to have very thin shells that will break if not handled with care, greatly increasing the difficulty of hatching.
Finally, the symbol of America's national strength has become a symbol of human destruction of the environment.
By the 1960s, there were only 412 pairs of bald eagles nesting in the lower 48 states.
The United States realized the crisis later and banned the use of DDT nationwide. It also used artificial assistance to help bald eagles restore their population.
After decades of efforts, the bald eagle's name was finally removed from the endangered list.
It is worth mentioning that it was not until December 24, 2024, after discussion by the U.S. Congress, that the President signed a document officially recognizing the bald eagle's status as the 'national bird'.
The Eagle Sauce had no name or status for more than 200 years, but now it finally enjoys the treatment of the national bird.
It happened that on such a good day, Yu Yiyun, who had turned into a little eagle, couldn't be happy.
The bald eagle belongs to the family Accipitridae. It sounds like a bird of prey and is quite good-looking.
In fact, most of the time, the bald eagle is like an old man taking a stroll, picking up garbage everywhere with a careless pace.
The Eagle Sauce likes to get something for nothing and prefers to be a "kleptoparasite".
Simply put, it means following other animals and stealing or robbing their prey, which is a very rogue behavior.
The people who chose Eagle Sauce as the national symbol had a bit of a prophetic quality in them.
However, picking up trash and being a kleptophagous parasite are not the sources of Yu Yiyun's troubles.
He has been a wild beast for four lifetimes, and his sense of morality has been worn away by his wildness. Whether it's picking up trash or stealing and parasitizing, Yu Yiyun can adapt to it.
The problem is that bald eagles are accustomed to building their nests on large trees near the water. They are very tall, reaching a height of several dozen meters.
If a fledgling that has not learned to fly falls from the nest, it will most likely be sent back to the star.
During each breeding season, female sea eagles lay two eggs, but the survival rate is often only 50%.
Not long after a young sea eagle hatches, a 'heat dome' effect will most likely appear in its habitat, lasting anywhere from a few days to half a month.
A heat dome refers to a period of stagnation of thermal high pressure in the upper atmosphere, like a pot lid covering the sky and the earth.
Sustained heat domes will cause marine fish to return to deep sea areas, making it difficult for adult birds to hunt and greatly increasing the survival pressure on young birds.
By then, Cain-Abel syndrome had broken out inside the nest, with the chicks killing each other for a chance to survive.
Yu Yiyun is the third child in the family.
My older brother, who was born first, is nearly three times bigger than me.
Although the older sister, the second cub, was born only one day later, the female bald eagle is 20% larger than the male.
The older sister who was born later is almost as big as her older brother who was born earlier.
As a result, Yu Yiyun, who was born last and unfortunately a male bird, was left feeling like an unlucky species.
At that time, the young birds will snatch food from each other, and every claw from their older brothers and sisters will be enough for them to bear.
Yu Yiyun thought of her tragic future and decided to take advantage of the period when food was plentiful to eat more meals to supplement her nutrition.
But Yu Yiyun's good luck seemed to have run out just now.
The fish that the female bird brought back were indeed plump, but the brothers and sisters were starving, as if they were two mountains blocking their way.
Yu Yiyun was delicate and frail, and could not stand being pecked, so she could only hide humbly beside her and study her mother's feeding patterns.
The natural lifespan of a bald eagle is about 30 years, and they generally reach adulthood at the age of 4.
Judging from the mother's body shape and fur color, she should be about ten years old and must have bred at least three or four litters of cubs.
She is well aware of the law of survival of the fittest, and never stops the cubs from attacking each other. She only feeds the cubs that put their mouths in front of her.
One healthy chick has a better chance of survival than three weak chicks.
The elder sister hatched two days later and could not beat her elder brother. She was pecked so hard that she dared not raise her head. She could only timidly catch the gap when her elder brother had food in his mouth and quickly beg for food from her mother.
The great sea eagle fed the baby more than 50 mouthfuls of meat, more than 40 of which went into the brother's mouth, and only a few went into the sister's mouth.
It is conceivable that even if the elder sister has the advantage of size, she will still become weak due to hunger if she continues like this.
Yu Yiyun, who didn't even have the qualifications to grab food, was even more miserable. She would have died before her sister starved to death.
After feeding her young, the female bird flapped her wings and flew away from the nest to continue looking for food.
On average, adult birds spend several hours foraging each time.
Young sea eagles need to eat at least five meals a day, and even if the parents take turns foraging for food, it is still difficult to fill the stomachs of all the cubs.
Yu Yiyun lay in his nest with a hungry stomach, and realized a profound truth:
Separation, birth, three, fetus.
Fortunately, birds have crops in their bodies that can store food so they don't starve to death immediately.
Yu Yiyun lay there motionless, avoiding unnecessary exercise and wasting energy, waiting for her father to return with great anticipation.
Bald eagles form lifelong partnerships, with a male and female pair remaining faithful to each other for the rest of their lives unless one of them dies or the eggs fail to hatch.
After the chicks hatch, the mother is responsible for feeding them while the father is responsible for finding food, and they sometimes take turns.
Because the burden of three chicks is too heavy, the mother sea eagle has to join the foraging.
Calculating the time, Yu Yiyun has not seen her father since she was born.
Even if he went to the middle of the Pacific Ocean to look for food, he should come back.
Thinking of the central Pacific Ocean, Yu Yiyun thought of the killer whales living there.
Having said that, the diet of bald eagles is very similar to that of killer whales, they eat herring in the spring and salmon in the fall.
Some bald eagles hover over the water, waiting for killer whales to pull up herring from the bottom of the water.
Yu Yiyun thought optimistically: When I learn how to catch fish, maybe I can meet killer whales~
If I were to turn into Little Eagle, those salmon fin killers and herring robbers would definitely not be able to recognize me...
As Yu Yiyun thought about it, she became more and more sleepy, and her eyelids began to droop.
Just before he fell into a deep sleep, he heard a long-lost "ga ga" sound.
"Hmm?"
Yu Yiyun suddenly opened his eyes and looked up to see——
A raven with a shiny black body circled twice in the sky and discovered this bald eagle's nest that was not guarded by any big birds.
“Ga ga~”
The raven folded its wings and swooped down happily.
The big guys of the Corvidae family can also be called birds of prey, but compared to the bald eagle of the Accipitridae family, it is just a younger brother.
However, young bald eagles have no attack power and are equivalent to a free lunch.
The elder brother and elder sister realized the danger and immediately made loud calls to call their two relatives.
The sound was heard from a long distance but there was no response. It seemed that the parent bird was not nearby.
The raven felt more relieved, and landed in the center of the bowl of the bird's nest with a hop, intending to pick the easiest little chirp to whet his appetite.
“Chirp!”
Yu Yiyun realized the danger and rolled over with all her strength.
He didn't roll away.
Yu Yijun had experienced Boss Crow's speed and endurance during the two years he was a dog, so there was no way he would give himself a chance to escape.
Yu Yiyun rolled around a few times and directly put herself into the soft belly feathers of the Crow Boss. Without thinking twice, she began to use her innate skill - acting coquettishly.
He opened his mouth wide and screamed as aggrieved as he could be.
“Chirp!”
Why did you come just now? I'm starving!
"Chirp! Chirp!"
Hungry! Food!!!
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com