Build your own nest box!

As you know, my cockatiel Chauncy has laid four eggs. She has been sitting on them night and day like a champ because Olive (the father) is either too lazy or too stupid to help with the incubation duties. Anyway, from day one, Chauncy has refused to use the totally sweet nest box I bought her. It's made out of wood and has a removable lid and all sorts of awesome features, but she prefers the cage floor. Whatever.

At first she wouldn't even sit on the eggs if there was a paper towel under them. Eventually I got her to accept a paper towel, then a modified Swiss Miss cocoa box with paper towels lining it. But here's the problem I've been running into: OLIVE KEEPS POOPING IN THE NEST BOX. It's not like he's sitting in the nest box and using it as his own huge toilet. He sits on the perches above it and drops his little poop bombs on top of it. That was fine when the eggs were still new and I could change the paper towels. But it's getting to the point now where the chicks inside the eggs are pretty developed and getting ready to hatch, and you're not supposed to be moving the eggs around because it could disorient the chick and screw up hatching. Also, what am I supposed to do when the chicks hatch? They can't go stumbling blindly into piles of their father's poop!

The answer, my friends, lay in what I'm calling the nesting tiki hut. I cut up another box (this time scalloped potatoes, not Swiss Miss) and made a roof and four pillars to hold it up. Then I taped the pillars to the corners of the Swiss Miss box and taped the roof onto the pillars. Finally I taped a piece of cling wrap to the roof so I could remove it and replace it with a fresh sheet if Olive pooped on it. TA DAAA! Nesting tiki hut!

At first Chauncy eyed it with suspicion, but after a couple of minutes she got right in and hunkered down to brood on her eggs. This picture makes me laugh harder and harder the more I look at it. But isn't Chauncy so cute?