We
had almost given up hope of a chick flying today when suddenly it seemed
about to happen!Here is a chick well out of the nest box. |
Away
he goes!He doesn't have to go far. There is a thick hedge about four feet from the front of the box. |
Three
seconds later he is flying back to the box again ... |
... and landing, rather awkwardly, on its roof. |
There
it spent a while looking around at this strange new world it has found
itself in. |
It
stayed there quite a long time. |
In
fact it was over two minutes later that it flew off again.Two down and three to go! |
An
hour and twenty minutes later, a third chick flew. This time the
outside camera missed it for some reason. |
Twenty
minutes later either Rosie or Will feeds a chick on the hole - and a couple
of seconds later, this chick left the nest box for ever. |
This
left the last chick who hatched out a day after the previous two. In
fact, this chick hatched out only 16 days ago and is probably the youngest
chick to fledge that we have had. |
It
carefully squeezes itself out of the hole. |
This
is the last shot we have of it. Again, there isn't another picture
taken by the camera outside. |
Both
parents came back to the empty nest with food. They must be so
habituated to it that they find it difficult to stop. |
This
is Rosie's last visit.Although you can only see one unhatched egg, somewhere down there are another two which will be cleared out with the rubbish when I clean the box in the autumn. Now we have only Donna's chicks to watch! We expect they will fledge in a couple of days time. |