Bluetit Diary    May 2009 (3)

 

 

Saturday 3rd May (part2)

Another piece of eggshell!  A second chick must have hatched!

Bertie and Bella admiring their two offspring.

It is now eleven minutes past one and another chick has hatched.

Twenty two minutes later there is another!

Chick number five!

So many chicks have now hatched that it is difficult to distinguish them individually.

Chick number six has hatched.

This synchronised hatching is one of nature's miracles.  The 12 eggs were laid one each day for 12 days and then incubated for another 12 days; yet half of them hatched within the space of 90 minutes!

As incubation started before the last one or two eggs were laid, it would be reasonable to expect one or two eggs to hatch later than the rest.

Up till now, Bella has been eating the shells of the eggs as they hatched.  She has either got fed up with this or is just too full to take any more egg shell and so she now starts to take the shells out of the nest box.

You will find that females always take the egg shells some way away from the nest box before dropping them.  We have never found a piece of bluetit's egg beneath one of our nest boxes.

Six chicks and six unhatched eggs!

Another egg must have hatched!

We haven't forgotten Fay in all the excitement of Bella's chicks.

Here she seems to have 8 eggs!

At last, a shot of the missing father!

It is lovely to catch a shot of Bill feeding Fay in the nest box.  Bill does exist after all.

Another picture of Fay's 8 eggs ...

... and another feed for Fay.  Perhaps Bill is going to be a good parent after all!

A final shot of Bella's brood at just after 6pm.  It is not clear to us how many eggs have hatched now, but you can see that there are at least two more to go.