The Pose

The photo and text below were stolen from Jeffrey Low's blog, http://jeffctlow.blogspot.com/. This great photo was taken with his handphone. Since I accompanied him when he bought the handphone, I think I am entitled to share the photos from it even without his permission, haha.

SHAMA BODY LANGUAGE - THE POSE

An in-form male white-rumped shama will instinctively adopt a pose when another male of its kind first appears in sight. This is part of its body language signaling to the rival of its readiness for battle. Posing requires the muscles of its entire body to be tightened. During an impressive pose, the neck is stretched, the head is held high with the beak pointing slightly upwards, the legs are straightened to hold up the pose and the wings tightly folded around its body with the wing tips meeting just beneath the vent to fully expose the raised white rump. The pose is part of its display and is repeated throughout the display, occurring momentarily in between the movements of the display.

seven and a half months old Funkie, posing.

A Beginner's Puteh Experience

It’s been 1 ½ months since I got my Putehs (Oriental White-eyes). During this time, my knowledgeable friends have tried to teach me the ropes of Puteh care. I think I have learnt something and I thought I should pass it on as a possible help to other beginners who might benefit from the learning process of another beginner. Of course, each of you will still need to decide if you should adopt what I am doing or if some other method is more suitable for you.

In this post, I just want to talk about Puteh sh…

I know from keeping shamas that the state of a bird’s excreta should be observed daily as it provides a good indication of the bird’s health and the suitability of the food that the bird is getting. It’s the same with Putehs. Additionally, I am told that the state of a Puteh’s excreta may also indicate its form.

Those of you who have read my posts on shamas will know that ‘good’ faeces for the shama is a patch of white that looks like chalk with some darker matter in the centre. The white is urea, which is a by-product of a high protein diet which the shama requires while the darker matter is the actual excreta.

Unlike the shama, whose main diet is insects, the Puteh is a fruiteater. It does not need (nor will it thrive on) a high protein diet. Instead, what the Puteh needs is plenty of calories to provide the energy it requires for its very active lifestyle. To get the calories, the Puteh must process a great deal of calorie rich food through its digestive system. This in turn, results in a large amount of excreta comparative to the size of the bird.


Diarrhoea

A Puteh that has been deprived of water for a large part of the day will thereafter tend to suffer from a condition of having watery faeces. The faeces seems very much like diarrhoea. For want of a better word, I will refer to this form of excreta as watery faeces. The excreta can get so wet that it may even dribble off the cage floor if the cage is tilted. The cause of watery faeces is oversight in not providing the Puteh with sufficient water for the day.

When water is eventually provided, the Puteh tends to drink much more than what a healthy Puteh would consume. I do not know if the condition is medical or psychological but a Puteh suffering from watery faeces seems to always have an incurable thirst.

I am reliably told that there is no permanent cure for watery faeces though it is possible to mitigate the problem. One proven method is to offer a light unsweetened tea instead of water. The Puteh will drink less of the tea as it will not like the flavour and its excreta will be less watery. However, if water instead of tea is subsequently provided, the problem of watery faeces will immediately return.

One thing that should not be done in an attempt to treat the problem of watery faeces is to reduce the amount of water that is available to the Puteh. There was a bird forum not long ago that had a newly “resident” vet to offer advice on medical problems. One of the first questions he was asked was how to cure a Puteh that had a drinking habit? His advice was to limit the water daily available to the bird as it would then be forced to drink less and would eventually get used to drinking less water. Now, as any experienced Puteh hobbyist knows, withholding water from a Puteh with a drinking problem will only worsen the situation.

[to be continued]

Cataract

On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 2:14 AM, juan guillermo alvarez zuluaga wrote:

HELLO MR DAVID,

I AM an amateur keeper of insectivorous birds, especially the White-rumped Shama AND MY INQUIRY CONCERNS THIS BIRD. THE BIRD IS APPROXIMATELY ONE YEAR OF AGE AND PRESENTING THE PROBLEM THAT IN ONE OF ITS EYES IS CATARACT that covers all of it.

At first it was almost not noticeable but now it looks white because of this problem. IF YOU CAN ADVISE ME ON THIS HUGE PROBLEM BECAUSE I would appreciate ME DA MUCHA PENA who became blind.

IS THERE ANY REMEDY OR TREATMENT OR Who can I contact. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION AND INTEREST. I congratulate you on your birds that ARE AN INSPIRATION FOR NATURE LOVERS WITH NOT SO MANY YEARS OF EXPERIENCE OF SUCH BIRDS IN THEIR CARE.

SEE YOU SOON AND THANK YOU AGAIN.

ATTE: JUAN GUILLERMO ALVAREZ ZULUAGA
LIVE IN MURCIA-SPAIN




Hi Juan,

I am afraid there that the only reliable cure for cataract is to have an operation to remove the spoilt lens and replace it with an artificial lens. This is routinely done with humans and there have also been successful trials on dogs. As far as I know, it has never been done with birds.

What happens with cataract is that the lens in the eye oxidises and gradually becomes opaque until vision is completely blocked. The effect is somewhat like placing an egg in hot water. The egg-white will turn from clear to white. The process cannot be reversed although there are claims on the internet that this is possible with eye-drops.

Best regards,

David

Blackthroat010909

Below is a video that I recorded today of my Blackthroat Seedeater. I purchased it about 1 1/2 months ago.

P28 Dry Food

By David de Souza » First posted on the Malaysian Shama Forum on Wed Aug 26, 2009

In view of the enquiries in this forum, it may be useful if I share my experience of using the P28 brand of dry food for insectivores and also set out my criteria for choosing a dry food for my shamas.

Need to feed dry food

I have found that feeding purely live food to my shamas does not give the best results. The reason, I think, is that the limited variety of live food available in the form of crickets, mealworms, pineapple beetles, fish and froglets do not satisfy the complete nutritional needs of the shama.I therefore decided that a good dry food would need to be the shama's staple food and the live food would only be fed as a supplement. This requires that the dry food be as complete a food as possible if it is to serve the intended purpose.

Having tried many commercially available dry foods and finding none of them completely to my liking I ended by making my own dry food for my shamas. They were doing very well on this food but I have many shamas and the need to make dry food at periodic intervals proved to be a nuisance. I therefore looked around for a suitable readily available dry food.

I began to hear good reports from users of P28 and I finally decided to give it a try.

Over a period of several weeks, I gradually converted my birds to P28. I use it as the basic food and I add whatever I think might be useful.

My birds seem to do much better on P28 than other dry foods I had tried and I can assure you that I have tried many over more than 40 years. I now feed all my shamas except the breeders with a staple diet of P28 and some live food in the evenings. The breeders get only live food from the time they are paired.

I have 4 main criteria for choosing one brand of dry food over another and I consider them below.

The dry food should be scientifically formulated

It is desirable that the dry food be scientifically formulated by nutritionists who know the requirements of insectivorous birds such as shamas. This will ensure as far as possible, that the food has the proper balance of protein, fats, carbohydrates, vitamin and mineral levels etc that the birds need.

My research showed that there are several brands of imported food available in Singapore for insectivorous and softbill birds. Amongst them is P28. This is a scientifically well formulated pellet food for insectivores.

I should mention that there is an insect based food that was in the market long before P28 and which is still available. I had tried it many years ago when it was first introduced into Singapore. I had rejected it as it did not satisfy my criteria for a suitable food. In any event, even the local distributor has admitted in this forum that he does not use his insect based food as the main food for his shamas but makes his own concoction and uses the insect food only as one of many ingredients. It seems to me that if the importer himself has no faith in his food, it cannot be much good.

I do feed dried insects to my birds so why did I find the commercially available insect based food to be unsuitable? I cannot be sure but my guess is that to reduce costs, the manufacturers of such food tend to purchase the lowest quality dried insects that is available.

Make a Google search and you will find that bulk sellers of dried insects offer them in several grades, say, A, B and C with C being the cheapest and lowest grade. Grade C will comprise of insects that are of very poor quality because of incorrect processing methods or overlong storage. If this grade of insects forms a major part of the composition of a food, the bird is not likely to find the insects palatable or nourishing.

Long usage

Even though a food may not have been scientifically formulated, long availability in the marketplace and usage may establish its suitability. This is in fact the position with the local brands known as Synlin and Three Coins. My shamas seemed to do much better on these 2 brands than other commercially available dry food. Unlike the imported insect based food, my shamas found these 2 brands palatable. If a food such as P28 is not available and I do not wish to make my own food, I would probably use 1 of these 2 brands.

Excreta

You can easily tell from the excreta of a bird whether it is insectivorous, or a fruit or seed eater.

The excreta of an insectivorous bird that eats live food will take the form of a patch of white with a bit of darker matter in the centre. The white matter is uric acid which is the result of a high protein diet while the darker matter is the actual excreta. A suitable dry food should result in the excreta being as close as possible to the excreta of a bird eating live food. P28 and the 2 local brands of dry food satisfy this requirement.

Molt

The best test of the suitability of a food is how well the birds do after eating the food over the course of the molt. If the food is correct, the birds should be singing even during the molt and by the time they complete the molt, their feathers should be in perfect condition and they should be singing well and in good form. One of my shamas has completed his full molt on P28 and I am happy with his condition and form. Three of my other shamas are molting on P28 and I am also happy with their progress.ConclusionI am no expert and there are many things that I still have to learn about the care of shamas. I nevertheless feel that it might be useful for others to share my experiences and whatever knowledge I have managed to acquire about shamas. Almost invariably when I do so, I set out the basis of my advice and/or the source of my information so that the reader can assess for himself if the advice is sound. I have unfortunately found that this is not always the case with advice that is often so freely given in the forum.

Letter from Belgium

26th August 2009,

Hello David,

I have kept shamas since 2 years ago. Everything I learnt about them was from your site and blog. Lets be honest, if there is somebody that knows his birds on this planet it is you. Thanks very much for your patience of making a wonderful site like yours and teaching us how to care for this beautiful birds. Without that, Ii think there would be a lot of dead shamas in captivity everywhere or not in such good condition.

Well this year I'm trying for the first time to breed shamas. The couple I have is 2 years old and this is the first time they are being bred. I now have 5 little shamas from 20 egs and the female has 5 more egs. One of the eggs was not fertile. The rest were well but the female kills the young when they are born.

I give plenty of live food, buffalos, crickets, red runners, phoenix worms (they don't like this very much) and others. To have success with the breeding, I have to take out the male when the chicks are born otherwise the female kills them. When she throws them out, I put them back until she stops. Well the last time is going better. We will see what happens now with the last eggs.

Now my problem is this, a few days ago between the 4th and 5th egg I noticed that the female cant fly. A few hours after she laid the egg on the flour and I put it back in the nest which I placed on the floor, it was strange that she accepted, amazing.

Today I saw that the female could not fly again. This is the second time this happened. Last time for 4 to 5 days in the beginning of the season this time lucky only 2 days.

I never saw a fight with the male so is this just a small injury on the wing because she gets scared with something? Something wrong in the food that causes he to be too week when laying eggs? Is it possible there is injury as the birds are so fragile with their wings?

I send 3 pictures, one from the aviary with the nest in the normal height, a picture with the nest down and 2 of the chicks. Now that the female is good again, I don't know if it is better to put the nest in the normal position. Very difficult to feed like this. I have to do it ninja - keeping very quiet and low so as not disturb her.

Greetings from Belgium
Thanks,
Louis

27th August 2009,

Hi Louis,

Thank you for the kind words.

My guess is that your female shama is not getting enough calcium. This mineral is required not only to make the shell of the eggs but it is also needed for the muscles to function properly. In extreme cases of the calcium being insufficient, the female will lay soft-shelled eggs or she will suffer from egg-binding. The female's inability to fly is also likely to be due to insufficient calcium since without it the muscles will not be able to properly expand and contract.

I note that your live food does not seem to include vertebrates such as fish and baby frogs. It is useful to provide vertebrates as their bones will provide the calcium the bird needs. If it is not feasible to feed such food, I would suggest that you supplement the food with calcium. The most effective is liquid calcium. Spread some on the fingers and wipe it on the insects. Feed calcium not more than 4 times a week since too much calcium can also cause problems.

If there is a deficiency of one mineral, it is likely that other minerals and vitamins may also be lacking. You may therefore want to feed a vitamin and mineral supplement to your birds in addition to calcium.

Best regards,

David

On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 2:28 AM, melro 8 wrote:

Hallo David,

Thank you for writing back. I found it strange that the problem of the female is calcium because I give a very good product that includes calcium, vitamins etc. I give this to all my birds; shamas and other thrushes, but like I said in my other letter, nobody knows better the needs of these birds than you so I'm going to take care of that - more calcium.

I also read that extra vitamin b complex would be better. I bought one product but I didn't like that one. After giving it to the birds, they throw up everything they eat so I'm going to look another. Well my other thrushes get extra calcium not only from the powder but also from earthworms cos they eat a lot of that but my shamas don't like it(or take very little) so I'm going to give some more powder and again some fishes.

Sometime ago,I gave baby trout. The male only kills them but does not eat them. The female eats a few. Starting from tomorrow I'm going to buy more and give occasionally. On the eggs i didn't find nothing unusual until now. The female laid 25 this season. I never had a bird that laid so many. My wife says that she look like a chicken hehe. But yes a lot of the calcium goes into that and the body may be weak after that.

I'm also going to put the nest back to its place for the bird to have more rest. The product I give is Aves-Insect dustingpowder from Aves Products http://www.avesproduct.nl/. I send 2 pictures, one from the eggs and a funny one from my male shama he likes a lot of his daily sun, my other shamas not so much.

Well sir I don't take any more of your time. It was a pleasure for me to talk with you. I will give news from this last clutch of the season, I hope her hormones are better and that she save more chicks this time(one more of the many things that I learnt from your site).

Best Louis

28th August 2009,

Hi Louis,

Large amounts of calcium are required to make an egg. The calcium must be readily available and must be provided within a very short time. The food that the female consumes during the day will not have sufficient calcium to make the egg and the calcium is in fact drawn down from the bones which is the storage place for calcium that the bird does not require for immediate use.

If the birds consume insufficient calcium, there will be little or no calcium to store in the bones. On the other hand, if the bird consumes a great deal of calcium daily, the message that the brain sends is that calcium is plentiful and there is no need for it to be stored. For this reason, I had advised that calcium should not be fed to the bird more than 4 times a week.

By not feeding calcium 3 days a week, the bird's brain will pass the message that calcium may not always be available and it should be stored in the bones. Whether the bird is fed too much or too little calcium, the effect is the same. There may be insufficient calcium to make the egg in which case the bird will lay a soft-shelled egg. Or, there may be sufficient calcium to make the egg but the bird is so depleted of calcium thereafter that there is insufficient calcium to work its muscles and this results in the bird temporarily losing its ability to fly. The fact that your female is unable to fly after laying the 4th or 5th egg suggests that the cause is calcium deficiency.

David

Oriental White-eyes

The most popular cage bird in Singapore and Malaysia is the Oriental White-eye
(z. palpebrosus). For shamas, having 50 birds in one place would be a good number but it is not unusual to find 300 to 400 Oriental White-eyes at each of the more popular gathering places in in Singapore on Sundays.

The cages for these birds are very small and each owner can comfortably carry 2 to 6 birds. Canvas bags can even be purchased for the specific purpose of carrying cages for these birds. These bags look very much like large shopping bags with each bag being able to hold up to 3 cages. This enables the more enthusiastic hobbyist to personally transport 6 cages at a time with the help of 2 of these bags, one bag in each hand.

The Oriental White-eye is also known as Mata Puteh (i.e. “white eye”) in Malaysia and Singapore. This name is derived from the ring of white around the eyes which thicken as the bird gets older. I will refer to the Oriental White-eyes as Putehs (for short) in the rest of this post.

On Sunday 15th August 2009, I purchased 8 Putehs that were selected from a communal cage. When Putehs are chosen from a communal cage, there is always the hope that one of the selected birds will eventually, with proper care, develop into an outstanding specimen, with a value many times the price of the original purchase.

There is no guarantee that any of the birds from a communal cage will turn out to be special so a great deal of time and effort may be invested in the birds without any worthwhile success after many months of effort. I suppose that's what makes this hobby interesting - a possibility of finding a rare gem, which was acquired at a very low price.

I kept Putehs many years ago. Then, as now, I do not keep Putehs in the usual way. The conventional method is to house each Puteh in a small cage and to bring the bird often to Puteh gatherings to get it used to the company of other Putehs. The outings also test the courage of the Puteh as it is a brave bird that will sing its territorial song when in the company of many other Putehs who may also be singing their territorial song.

I neither have the time nor the inclination to keep Putehs in this way. Rather, I prefer to house new Putehs in a small aviary and to select a few at a time and place them in individual cages to assess how each is progressing and its potential from the hobbyist’s point of view. Those that are not up to the criteria that I have in mind, go to new homes and new Putehs may take their place so that over a period of say, a year, I might eventually end up with up to 12 Putehs that meet my requirements. These birds will continue to be primarily housed in the aviary with perhaps a few in cages at any one time.

It was with the above in mind that I started with 8 Putehs. I placed them in a small aviary in my garden in a location which is likely to be safe from lizards and other nuisances that could disturb them at night. Over the next few days, I checked the birds in the morning to see if they were OK. Two had some blood on their noses. I was not too concerned as these birds had probably injured themselves in the course of housing in the new place rather than that they had been frightened at night. In the course of the week, the birds got to know their new home. They seemed fine on the whole.

Last Saturday morning, my good friend acquired one of the Putehs from me. This left me with 7 Putehs.

On Saturday evening, I spent 2 relaxing hours selecting Putehs from my aviary. I eventually kept 2 of the Putehs in individual cages. Putehs are very curious birds and it is easy to trap them from the aviary. Just place a cage in the aviary with a papaya or other fruit in it and, within minutes, one or more Putehs should enter it. Calmly approach the cage, close the door and remove the cage with the Puteh in it. Trapping the Puteh in this way and observing it for a while to decide on whether I wished to keep it in a cage, I eventually decided on the Putehs to keep in the 2 cages I had at the time.

Yesterday morning, my friend and I took our new Putehs to the guppy farm where I buy the food fish for my shamas. There must have been other Putehs around the farm although we could not see or hear them for our birds got excited and my friend’s bird and one of mine sang their territorial song. We were pleased that our birds showed such promise as it is important that the Puteh be willing to sing in a strange place for this shows courage. Many birds may sing at home but are silent when out of their familiar surroundings. I would not keep such a bird.

My Puteh’s call was also the very desirable ‘tshew’ and he showed promise. All in all, it was a satisfying morning. On Sunday evening, I kept the Puteh that had performed well in the morning and trapped another 2 Putehs for assessment in individual cages. I intend to keep these 3 Putehs in individual cages and assess them during the week. I hope to let you know how my Putehs turn out in a future post.