Chestnut Munia Nest in my hand. How many eggs could it it be inside ?

Chestnut Munia Nest in my hand. How many eggs could it it be inside ?
It fell down from one of the Manila Palm trees during the night. And luckily for me I was able to pick it up with a few remaining eggs (or should I say eggshell) inside.

The chestnut munia (Lonchura atricapilla) make these wonderful globular nests, but they have a nasty tendency to fall down from our Palm trees during light to heavy storms.

Lucky for us when they do fall down we are able to pick the nests up and take a closer look.

These nests can hold a small clutch of 5 to 10 eggs. The eggs have a creamy white color and are approximately 1 cm long. But when the eggs have hatched the eggshell are very fragile and easily falls apart as it did when I handled it in my hand.

Note: Some sources will list the number of eggs from 4 to 5, but according to the book "A Guide to the Birds of the Philippines" published by Oxford University Press - they list the number as 5 to 10, so I uses this as my source here. I've not counted any nest here with that many eggs, but when you try to count the number of eggs after they have hatched you will mostly be wrong as the parents clean out the nest when they feed the nest - so the true number of eggs will not be there after the birds have left the nest and flown away.

The munia birds you saw in the beginning of this video had taken shelter on the bushes on the wall behind me. These juvenile munia birds looks just a few days old. They had not jet mastered the art of flying, and if I had chosen to catch them I would have succeeded. 7 of them slept in the inside of my little gym during the night.

If you have any questions please leave them in the comments below. Note: I will remove all negative / insulting and spam comments - keep the comments positive and and I will respond as best I can.

Until next time. You take care and remember:
Birding is fun everyday !

Bye bye and see you soon again.

Duffy

#BirdingIsFun #DuffyRomerica #Munia