Pintail Whydahs - do they eat eggs?

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dukem
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Posts: 47
Joined: 30 May 2012, 00:35
Location: Portugal
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Hello,
I had some Pintail whydahs and is true both female and male eat eggs of another spicies be carefull. Is one of the reasons that i dont like whydahs.
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E Orix
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Joined: 29 May 2009, 23:30
Location: Howlong on NSW/Vic Border 30km from Albury
Location: Howlong NSW

I have no doubt that the hen Pintail removes an egg when she lays in a nest to keep the numbers balanced.
This is generally accepted as nests of St Helena/Common Waxbill will fledge less if there is a young Pintail fledged with
them. When this happens the clutch size of the Waxbill is limited generally to 2 or 3 plus the young Pintail. If the is no interference
from the Pintail then my normal Waxbill clutch is 4+
Watching one of my Pintail cockbirds today really convinces me that he is just too busy to worry about any birds nest let alone eating
eggs.
With the extreme heatwave we have had sadly I had quite a few failed nests. This gave me access to a number of small eggs so I decided to
see what was interested in an unbroken egg on the ground. I was surprised that the bigger species weren't the ones really interested.
The smaller Waxbills were onto them much quicker pushing the eggs around until the shell cracked and it was eaten in what seemed seconds. None of the Weavers tackled the eggs and the Pekin Robins pushed them around but I didn't see them eat any. They may have late in the day when a put a couple out nearly on dark. All we can do is watch and we need eye witness
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