Beauty at last seems to have settled down to incubate. She has been on the eggs for most of the day, with only short absences, and Beau, her mate, has frequently been seen feeding her. We have not been around much to keep an eye on her, and as i-Catcher is set on web cam mode, we shall not have many photographs to check up on her activities.
Beauty continues to puzzle us - having apparently been incubating for two days, we saw an eighth egg when she left the box briefly this morning. It will be interesting to see when they all hatch - if they ever do! Assuming the normal 12 to 13 days of incubation, the expected hatching date is 14th or 15th May.
Conscious that we may have been neglecting Battler in Box2, we are trying to spend more time today looking at her. Her behaviour seems little changed. For example, she spent about 45 minutes from 9.19am in the box, during which time she was fed by her partner twice. After the second time, she promptly left the nest. Sometimes the male can be seen coming into the empty box looking confused. Now, at 7.15pm, Battler is back mothering the eggs and getting ready to spend another night roosting in the box. The fact that the last egg was laid on 17th April doesn't seem to worry her in the least But how would we know!!
Beauty has been incubating all day and is now settling down for the night. She has been fed pretty frequently by Beau and we have great hopes that at least some of her eggs will hatch. In this picture, Beau seems strangely reluctant to release his goody!
Finally, to show our frustrations with Battler in Box2, we have picked three pictures.
The first shows what we used to think was a warning "Don't dare come in here" picture, but as you can see from the second, quite the opposite is intended!
The second picture shows the situation less than a second later. Clearly, that angry looking face is a "feed me" signal.
A bit later and Battler is getting settled for the night. She will stay there until the next morning.
All the signs there of a successful egg laying and incubation - except that she (or another bird) laid the last one 2½ weeks ago and she isn't incubating them during the day!