I fear this is a rather sad post upon which to end the Diary for 2008.
We had noticed on Wednesday that Freda's partner, Ken, had only been visiting sporadically but with the excitement caused by the departure of Sally's chicks, we did not pay too much attention to it. Looking at the captured images later, we realised that during the afternoon, Ken came three times at about half past one, a couple of times between 4 and 5 and twice more after 7pm - that is a total of only seven visits during the 8 hour afternoon - not enough to satisfactorily feed even a small brood of four chicks.
On Thursday, Ken did not visit once. Freda went out for food several times during the day but it did not seem enough to feed her chicks adequately. At 8:34am Freda had to remove a second dead chick and we think that one of the remaining three chicks may also have died as on several occasions, when Freda was away from the nest, the place started to crawl with flies.
Freda settled down to brood the chicks as usual on Thursday evening but by the time we switched on this morning, there was no sign of her and her chicks appeared dead. She has not been inside the nest box so far today, and there has been no sign of life in the nest itself.
Still, the success of Sally's brood, with its record 10 chicks fledged, has left us with many good memories of the year and it is these that we shall treasure.
We must wish for better luck next year!