Chick #2 didn’t follow in chick #1’s footsteps and hasn’t stood up today. Chick #1 is a bit more steady on its feet.
Azina feeds the chicks – chick #1 is standing up!
There were five feeds today, most of them quite long. Pigeon was on the menu for all of them.
Azina spent the night in the box with the chicks but she wasn’t brooding them. She brooded them a couple of times in the morning but on the whole the chicks were left on their own for most of the day. Except for feeds (which amounted to 2 1/2 hours in total)
Azina and the chicks all asleep in the box
To finish, it can happen to the best of them! Azina has an off moment this morning…
Rainy day… And we got a repeat of Wednesday with few exchanges and long shifts with Azina doing one of six hours and Tom over three hours so he was back to over five hours in total. No sign of intruders 🙂
I was out for most of the day but took my tablet to do some spot checks (which turned out easier said than done, but it worked which was the main thing). Azina waited until one minute before I was due to leave to finally get up and reveal that there were still two eggs and two chicks.
Two chicks and two eggs
A check early afternoon gave me a hint that there may be a third chick but I lost signal and it’s not until later in the afternoon that I was finally able to confirm it and put the word out.
If you look closely at the shot above, taken at 11am, it looks like pipping on the egg on the left.
At 11:46, Azina turns and walks on the chick that’s just hatched. It’s still curled up from being in the egg! That is quite a rough start…
The third chick has just hatched
An hour later Azina gives us another glimpse. The chick has dried up a little.
Glimpse of the third chick a bit fluffier
Then, two and a half hours after it’s hatched, we get to see a fully fluffy chick at the second feed of the day. It’s the one at the back. It doesn’t get fed then but that is not a problem, freshly hatched Peregrine chicks usually don’t eat for many hours.
First views of fluffy third chick during the second feed of the day
It didn’t have to wait too long in the end as it got its first bits of food at the next feed.
The third chick gets its first food
By then I don’t know if this chick was the one that had been trying to hatch since Thursday…
The chicks got 4 feeds, a mix of Pigeon and Starling.
I forgot to mention yesterday that it was starting to mantle prey after grabbing it from a parent. It’s done it again twice today. 😉
Chick #1 mantling prey
It’s also been ‘weird’ and sleeping sitting up on its own on the ledge while its siblings were pancaked in the nest box. I don’t remember a chick doing that before.
Chick #3 sleeping sitting up on the ledge
It rained all night but the day was dry so they went out to exercise a few times but they spent most of their time inside.
Pancakes
They were fed five times, four times by Azina and once by Tom. All feeds lasted around 25 minutes and all feeds consisted of pigeon. Chick #3 has now caught up with its siblings in size; no more tiny one in the middle. And it looks like it’s growing bigger, bigger than Chick #1 for sure. It could be all the down giving a false impression but probably not…
Today was Chick #2′ 3 weeks birthday and to celebrate they all went out! 😉
Chick #2
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 😉
All three chicks are out
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.
All three chicks are out
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.
So much flapping!
https://youtu.be/jVc-iWK9ELM
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.
