BRAVEHEART: a hand-rearing adventure

Thanks to Gary Bralsford for his help with this article

SATURDAY promises to be a busy day. After all, it is bird market in Zwolle, the biggest bird market in Europe, where a lot of bird lovers from many countries in Europe meet. I have also made agreements myself to exchange, buy and sell birds. So it’s an early day for me and my friend Jos, who accompanies me on this annual outing. Because of the early departure, there is no time to feed my birds in the morning (pitch dark) – I’ve already done that the night before.

Everything was fine,), which are still breeding so late in the season. But their egg is first scheduled to hatch on Monday. A week earlier, I found an incubated egg broken on the ground, so there is only one egg left in the nest. It was fertilised – that was clearly visible.