We had almost given up hope of a chick flying today when suddenly it seemed about to happen!
Here is a chick well out of the nest box.
Away he goes!
He doesn't have to go far. There is a thick hedge about four feet from the front of the box.
Three seconds later he is flying back to the box again ...
... and landing, rather awkwardly, on its roof.
There it spent a while looking around at this strange new world it has found itself in.
It stayed there quite a long time.
In fact it was over two minutes later that it flew off again.
Two down and three to go!
An hour and twenty minutes later, a third chick flew. This time the outside camera missed it for some reason.
Twenty minutes later either Rosie or Will feeds a chick on the hole - and a couple of seconds later, this chick left the nest box for ever.
This left the last chick who hatched out a day after the previous two. In fact, this chick hatched out only 16 days ago and is probably the youngest chick to fledge that we have had.
It carefully squeezes itself out of the hole.
This is the last shot we have of it. Again, there isn't another picture taken by the camera outside.
Both parents came back to the empty nest with food. They must be so habituated to it that they find it difficult to stop.
This is Rosie's last visit.
Although you can only see one unhatched egg, somewhere down there are another two which will be cleared out with the rubbish when I clean the box in the autumn.
Now we have only Donna's chicks to watch! We expect they will fledge in a couple of days time.