After the excitement of yesterday, it's business as usual. There is no sign of an egg in Fluffy's nest and so we presume there are now five chicks. When the chicks are bigger, the easiest way to count them is to count their yellow gapes when they are fed, but when they are as young as this, not all the chicks will go for the food that is offered. This means that we have to rely of counting pink bodies wriggling in the bottom of the nest cup - not an easy task when looking at a video camera image.
Fantail's eggs are still all intact. If we are right, they should start hatching this weekend, so keep the webcam running.
The first picture today shows Flash having the privilege of removing a faecal sac. He immediately leaves the nest with it, dropping it well away from the nest. When Fluffy is presented with one when she is on the nest, after she has fed the chicks something Flash has brought in for example, she eats it! Not a pleasant thought. Later, when the chicks are bigger, she will also take it out.
The next pictures shows Flash passing some food to Fluffy to feed to the chicks. This picture and the last one from Tuesday above clearly show the different head feathers of the two sexes. The male's head is ruffled in a macho type of way, and the female's is softer and smoother. After he has given Fluffy the food, he's off to get some more.
"Here you are dear.
Sorry, can't stop!"
Fluffy lifts herself off the nest in order to be able to pass the food to one of her chicks below. Sometimes this takes a little time. With a small brood like this, we expect that the chicks would be well fed with any parents. After an apparently lackadaisical start, Flash seems to have become a model father, so we expect these chicks to get full quite often.
Once she has found a taker, Fluffy settles back again onto the nest. We think she looks rather smug!
One of the things that we are unable to share with you is the range of calls that the bluetit parents make. As well as the normal calls that are well documented and available on good bird CDs like 'The CD-ROM Guide to British Birds' by BirdGuides, there are several other more private calls: the one that the male makes outside the nest box to warn his mate that he is about to come in; the churring noise made by the female when she is trying to wake her chicks up to get them to take the food she is offering them., and others. Perhaps by next year we shall have worked our how to include these with our images.