Recently Tom has taken to offer food to Azina in the nest box, this time he decided to eat it on the spot when she refused. I don’t think she was too impressed 😉
Today was Chick #3’s four weeks birthday. It tried jumping on the wall five times, without success. I’d say the situation is otherwise the same as yesterday. It is still quite lively, has been going up and down the ledge a few times, has a big appetite but doesn’t pancake or preen much. And when it pancakes it doesn’t look restful. It needs to preen to break the pins and remove the down.
Chick #3
Talking of removing down, there isn’t that much left now on Chick #2’s back. That chick is still looking 100% fine. It pancakes a preens a lot. And it’s very lively. Much livelier than Chick #3 but, first, it’s three days older and, second, I think it’s a male and Chick #3 a female and males tend to be a bit more tightly strung.
Chick #2
Big achievement for Chick #2 today with a successful jump on the wall at its first attempt. It tried where it’s marginally easier (from experience of watching the chicks through the years) but, still, it’s a great achievement.
Chick #3 also attempted to jump on the wall but failed each time. Here are four of her five attempts.
The chicks were only fed three times today, once by Tom and twice by Azina. Again it was Pigeon on the menu all the way.
Today was a light day for Tom incubation wise but it was not for lack of trying! This was his last try for the day, around 7pm, but Azina didn’t want to budge 😉
Quite different to yesterday. Colder and wetter so Azina has brooded the chicks for most of the day and when she wasn’t then Tom did it. Though he’s struggling a fair bit to fit them all, and so is Azina to be fair 😉
Azina brooding the chicks
Which means that pretty much the only times they could flap their wings were during feeds and they did that a lot.
Tom feeding the chicks – Feeds often time to do some flapping
There were 6 feeds today, one by Tom. Mostly pigeon on the menu with a bit of Starling.
One thing I noticed today and that’s thanks to the 4 day gap between the chicks. When they hatch their feet are pink. When they fledge they’re pale yellow. On the shots where you can see that the feet of the older ones have started to turn yellow when they’re next those of the younger one. Because it’s a very subtle change I’d never noticed that before, and also because we’ve not had such big gaps before (especially with single chicks! 😉 )
