Azina was eager for the food Tom brought her this evening. She really rushed towards Tom!A few intruders again today (one seemed to be a juvenile but it was from quite a distance) but that didn’t disturb Tom and Azina’s incubation routine much.
One clip where Tom has to do a lot of begging.
And a few shots from today.
The remaining egg got in a position today that allowed me to say that the egg that hatched yesterday was the one that had been trying since Thursday. Between the moment I first saw the pipping and hatching that’s 54 hours.
All are doing well. Tom got to do a little bit of brooding and some feeding but the majority of this has been done by Azina.
The chicks got 7 feeds today! A mix of Starling and Pigeon again.
In the following clip, Tom does his best feeding the chicks with what he’s got 🙂 The chicks were fed an hour before and were not very hungry.
The chicks’ third feed of the day. All the chicks got some food but one of them ended up with the first bulging crop I’ve seen so far!
Shots for today:
Around 4pm Tom brought in a Collared Dove. He quickly took it away since Azina wasn’t interested in grabbing it.
This is the first time I record one as prey here. I have not seen one in Fulham (or Hammersmith) yet. I suspect he may have caught it in Barnes, and even there I don’t know that they are that common.
We still have two chicks and two eggs. It is probably too late now for the egg that was hatching yesterday. But it could still happen for the other egg. The problem is that the chicks are all over the eggs making it very difficult to spot signs of hatching. There was a pip on one of the eggs on the feed video below but we can’t say if it was new or not.
In the meantime we have two healthy chicks. And I’m going to stick my neck out, I am pretty sure we have one boy and one girl (with the boy being the first one to hatch). But time with tell.
They were fed six times today, pigeon every time.
Tom got to spend a fair bit of time with them. But Azina is still doing the vast majority of the brooding.
I wish they removed that carcasse…
Shots for today:
Two quiet days but very different. Yesterday Tom did little incubation (just under two hours). Today he did the most he’s done in a day so far this year with over five hours in two shifts. Today Azina did her longest day shift with seven hours on the trot.
About two thirds of the way through now…
Today was Chick #2′ 3 weeks birthday and to celebrate they all went out! 😉
The big excursion started while Tom was doing a feed and it was Chick #2 who went out first. Chick #1 followed three minutes later and Chick #3 22 minutes later, after Tom had gone. Chick #2 was out for well over an hour and Chick #3 for nearly an hour, but a lot of that time was spent huddled in the ‘hidden’ corner. Chick #1 came back in after half an hour and enjoyed some pancake me time in the box 😉
There was a clear difference in aptitude between the three. Chick #1 was standing and running around while flapping. Chick #2 could stand a bit and do a few steps. Chick #3 was mostly bum shuffling but was also trying to stand a bit. I’d say however that there seems to be more difference between 1 and 2 than between 2 and 3 even though they’re much closer in age.
The rest of the day was spent mostly sleeping as usual though there were bursts of activity from time to time, with plenty of flapping and playing with food.
There were six feeds and again it was only pigeon on the menu. Tom did two of the feeds, Azina the other four.
Funniest moment today was when Azina was doing one of her morning visits to the nest box, rooting around for bits and bobs as she does. She stepped on one the chicks’ tail and the poor chick ended up in total blind panic, hyperventilating!
A clip from yesterday with Tom and Azina preening by the nest ledge.
Shots for today:
It has been a tough day. It all started last night after I posted the daily update and I checked the cameras. I noticed that Chick #1 had either been crying since the last feed or had trouble breathing. When I checked this morning, it wasn’t any better. We made plans to pick it up tomorrow at ringing if it wasn’t improved and have it checked up at Wildlife Aid.
Throughout the morning it seemed to perk up from time to time and ventured outside a couple of times. At one point it lost its balance and fell on the ledge floor but picked itself up again. It pancaked with Chick #3 in the box for a while. Then around 12:30 it got up, went out of the box, to the hidden corner for a while. At 12:55 it came back to the wall in front of the box, collapsed and drew its last breath.
From the start last night I suspected it may be frounce/trichomoniasis. From a clip I sent Sean confirmed that it is the most likely cause. But, obviously, without checking the bird physically, we cannot be 100% sure. It is not avian flu. It will have come from one of the pigeons they ate. With hindsight, what I called being weird a few days ago, that it pretty much stopped pancaking and was spending its time sleeping standing up, was probably due to the illness. So it’s been going on for a few days. I didn’t say anything yesterday, in part because Chick #2 had stolen the show, but I had noticed that it seemed a bit lethargic. And thinking back on it, I don’t think it had done much flapping.
Now the sad thing is that it has felt like Chick #3 has been a bit off today, and has been sleeping sitting up a bit. But at other times it seems to perk up, and to pancake. Hopefully it is me being paranoid. Chick #3 is also the one that seems to be missing Chick #1 the most. It’s sat by or pancaked on it a few times. The rest of the family have completely ignored it.
The good news is that Chick #2 on the other hand has been very perky. It’s been up and down the ledge a few times, enjoyed a few paddles and did a lot of flapping.
There were just three feeds today, two by Azina, one by Tom. Again only pigeon on the menu.
Ringing tomorrow has been postponed until Monday.
A reduced album tonight:
