"They've all left me!"
"I've really, really got to go too!"
"I'm frightened"
But eventually, even Scrap flies. Well, sort of!
This last picture is of Scrap leaving the nest box. He managed about 20 feet before collapsing in the berberis shrub opposite the box. There he clung on for dear life, dangling upside down from one of its branches.
Shortly afterwards, while I went for my camera, Elizabeth saw him fly several yards down to the lawn, where he was looking around.
His head feathers are still almost non-existent and most of his other feathers seem stunted. We felt we could do nothing for him and left him to his fate.
Ferdinand checked the box out a couple of minutes later. It looks as though he has something to feed the chicks too.
Both parents came back regularly during the day as if they couldn't believe their chicks had really gone!
Here is Ferdinand inside the box about 20 minutes later.
And here is Babe towards the end of the day, giving the box one last check.
We have often wondered about how Ferdinand came to lose his tail feathers. It's not just that he has lost one or two, but he's lost the lot! There is another possible explanation. Maybe he has a genetic abnormality and has never had tail feathers. Does this have any bearing on Scrap's feather problem? Who knows! And why did the fifth chick die? Will we find it's decaying corpse when we come to clean out the nest box?
So that's the end of our story for this year. We hope we will see some of Kelly's and Babe's chicks fluttering around the garden and hedges during the coming weeks. If we have any more news to report, we'll post an update later.