Bluetit Diary    Jun 2002 (2)

 

 

Sunday 2nd June 2002

As expected, Beauty's remaining four chicks flew first thing this morning.  Unfortunately, owing to a switch being left in the wrong position, the VCR did not record their going and when we got up at a civilised hour, there was nothing to see but an empty nest!

So here's a picture of Battler with her ever hungry chicks.  They are growing fast and will be gone within the week.  Lets hope they get a good start to life outside the nest with some warm, dry weather!

"MORE!"

Having now watched Battler's chicks for most of the day, it appears that they are much noisier that Beauty's chicks.  Whether they really are hungrier or merely appear so makes no difference to their continual racket!  We were worried that perhaps they were getting neglected, but during the early part of the day at least, they were fed pretty frequently.  The frequency that they were fed tended to drop off towards the end of the day - perhaps Battler and Victor were tired!

"Please come back soon!"

On Wednesday 28th May, we mentioned that these chicks would sometimes become inattentive when one of their parents was playing games with the grub that had been brought into the nest - sometimes appearing to offer it to one chick, before removing it and offering it to another.  This would lead to a gruff "chirrup, chirrup" from Victor to wake them up again.  No longer.  The chicks look as though they could eat their parent bird when it comes into the nest, and if it doesn't leave food for them all - an impossibility - they are still yelling for it even when the parent has gone.

"Surely some food will come soon?"

And when she has been gone for more that 30 seconds they peer our of the nest box hole looking for her to reappear!

"At last, they haven't forgotten us!"

But the look they give when food arrives....

"That wasn't much!"

....isn't much different from the one they give when the food bearer departs!

"Just give us the food!!!"

As you can tell from our comments, we think these chicks have but one thought on their minds - FOOD!

Just five days to go now!