Great excitement today. David Jones has his first chick, earlier than expected. Our bird is 2 days behind his in incubation, and we had calculated that our first chick might appear on Wednesday 16th. We are wondering if ours will be early too.
This morning she brought in a couple more feathers, and fussed around, tucking then into the nest cup - is she trying to make it more comfortable and cosy for herself, or for the long awaited hatchlings?
Our bird seems to be getting very itchy - she has bouts of violent preening, so we wonder if other smaller creatures are sharing her nest. In the afternoon Elizabeth put more mealworms into the feeder, and tapped on the garden chair underneath it - we are trying to train our bird to recognise the arrival of more food. Shortly after, our bird left her nest, and paused in the entrance hole for a short while, before flying up into the tree. She was not seen to take any mealworms before she returned to the nest, and snuggled herself down again.
For the second morning, she has gone out at about 9 o'clock, for a bath. She arrives back at the nest looking very bedraggled, not a bit like her normal desirable self. The pictures on the left don't really do justice to the way her feathers stick out all over the place.
We actually saw her being fed
this morning, but she again messed up the opportunity to give hubby some positive feedback by leaving the
nest shortly after. So when hubby came a second time with a lovely fat caterpillar, she was gone,
and no amount of calling could bring her back. As a result, after a second abortive visit about 30
seconds later, he left, probably eating the caterpillar himself.
Another bath in the evening left
her similarly bedraggled.
No signs of hatching yet, though our bird seems rather restless. She has left the nest quite frequently, though only for short periods. Again on several occasions the male has come in with a green juicy caterpillar, only to find an empty nest. He returns 2 or 3 times, as if expecting her to materialise, but then gives up and goes away. At least when the chicks are hatched he will find his visits more rewarding. He did manage to feed the hen once while we were watching, but it was a very brief encounter.
Today the chicks are due to start hatching. At about 8 o'clock, I turned on the camera and immediately it was apparent that there were some chicks! How many was not clear as I only saw some pink blobs as the hen was turning the eggs after which she settled down again to incubate. Some time later, she left the nest and all was revealed. There were 9 eggs when we switched off the camera last night but now there are 5 chicks and only 4 eggs. There is no sign of any egg shell so this has been eaten or otherwise removed.
Unfortunately, the weather could be better. It is cold and overcast with an intermittent drizzle. Of course, we watched closely for the next few hours. The pattern seems to be that the hen continues to incubate very much as before, including the egg turning which is as rough as ever, (how do the chicks survive this treatment?) while the cock visits periodically with variously sized offerings of food. This he passes to the hen (when she is present) who sometimes eats it herself, but more often tries to get one of her reluctant chicks to eat it. They do not seem very keen to do anything except rest, but usually one or two can be persuaded into taking a morsel of food by prodding and continually chirruping at them. If the cock arrives when the hen is not there, he tries to feed the chicks himself and this explains his behaviour earlier when he came to an unoccupied nest. He was not looking for the hen amongst the eggs, but a newly hatched chick! He also prods and chirrups at the chicks in an attempt to get one of them to feed.