A few shots from today.
I was a bit off in my estimation for the egg laying time. Azina got up and settled in egg laying position a few times in the night but it’s when Tom came in with food that she finally laid it, 61hr11m after the second one.
I think they’ve started incubating in earnest now and Azina hasn’t let Tom do much of it.
I expect the fourth, and presumably last, egg to come Sunday afternoon/early evening.
Someone had something green for breakfast, lunch or dinner 😉
Azina cast a pellet this afternoon that’s a bit more colourful than the other ones you can see to her right.
And another picture in picture clip. This time Tom is incubating in the box and Azina pays a visit.
The second egg laying video. Azina got up from the egg at 4.35, got into position at 4.38, pushes at 4.40/4.41 and at 4.42 she lifts up to let the egg to dry off. At 4.46 she turns a bit and starts settling down.
This makes it 60 hours and 10 minutes between the first two eggs.
I didn’t do an update yesterday as it had been a very quiet day. So was today thankfully 🙂 The pair has really settled into the routine. Tom has ended up doing a bit over four hours each day which is a bit over his average last year.
A clip from today: Tom had barely settled on the eggs when Azina came back and demanded to incubate again. Poor Tom! It’s not like she’d been incubating for over 12 hours. 😉 But his following shift two hours later ended up being nearly three hours long. Happy Tom! 😂
And a few shots from yesterday and today.
The chicks spent part of the night on the ledge, until it started raining and they took refuge in the box.
We went to ring the chicks this morning with the thought that we would assess Chick #3’s condition and act accordingly.
Chick #2 weighed in at 750g, which is a good weight for a young male. He was fitted with an orange ring with code P6T.
Chick #3 weighed in at 760g, which is very low for a young female. And she felt thin. There were plaques in her throat, which are signs of frounce, and explained why she had difficulty swallowing food. It was then decided to remove her from the ledge and to take her to Wildlife Aid (I had contacted them previously to check that we could).
I put her in my cat basket (the same I’ve used at FledgeWatch) covered with a blanket and drove her there. They quickly admitted her. I was quite relieved when they replied to my tweet and said they’d started her treatment. She is far from out of the woods yet but she’s been given a chance.
Back a the hospital P6T was in shock for a while but finally settled down around 12:30 and pancaked for a few hours. He woke up around 4:15pm, went out and found some food Azina had cached earlier to feed himself. He jumped on the wall at 4:48pm and has been there the whole time since apart from about a minute. It’s past 9pm as I’m typing this and he’s still there. He’s sat, flapped, preened on there. He’s walked it from one end to the other a couple of times. He even had dinner on it when at long last Azina brought him food and he had his first and only feed of the day. He seems very comfortable on it and has even sat on the outside edge.
I’m sure you’ll agree with me that P6T is turning into a stunning dark young Peregrine!
You can donate to Wildlife Aid to help with the cost of taking care of Chick #3.
Today’s shots:
It’s all going well. The chicks are getting plenty of food. And I know some of you are concerned about the smallest chick. Don’t worry! It’s getting plenty of food, just as much as its siblings. If you’ve watched the second Live on Facebook you’ll have seen all three of them full to bursting after what was their eighth feed of the day!
But I think this chick is going to be trouble. It wandered away during one of the feeds and Azina had to grab it to bring it back with the others.
They managed to surprise me with another first: Tom feeding the chicks while they were under Azina. Very interesting interactions this year.
As mentioned above, the chicks had eight feeds today. Again it was a mix of starling and pigeon.
Shots for today:
The chicks ended spending a fair bit of time on the ledge this afternoon and had two meals back to back out of the box. Tom had fed them for about 20 minutes. Less than 10 minutes later Azina arrived with more food. At first the chicks didn’t seem interested but one by one got more food and that feed lasted 40 minutes!
If you’re on facebook that double feed was during a long Live session.
There was variety on the menu again today with pigeon, starling and blackbird. Tom fed the chicks three times and Azina three times too. Very well fed kids!
Chick #1’s back is looking even more like a pincushion and Chick #2’s back has started. It’s somehow clearer in the night mode shots.
Chick #3 is still making real efforts to stand up and Chick #2 is getting better at it.
Shots for today:
