Bluetit Diary    May 2001 (4)

It is now 6pm and it's been raining hard most of the day.  Nonetheless the cock  has regularly been bringing small green caterpillars for the hen to feed to the chicks.  Sometime during the day another chick hatched, but it made so little fuss about it that the first we knew was that an egg had disappeared.  Although it is difficult to distinguish each separate chick, we think we can now count 6 so at least that balances!

Didn't we do well!

The picture on the left show the hen asking for the grub that the cock has brought to the nest.

The one on the right shows the hen with the grub having accepted it.

Finally, she feeds it to a chick while he watches with interest.  He normally flies off for the next grub before she has finished feeding the chicks, but he is clearly interested in what is going on - or perhaps he doesn't want to go back out into the rain!