Sometimes the begging works 😉 But it can be quite tough getting up when you’ve been lying down for nearly six hours…
Very quiet day today. Tom did three shifts totalling 3hr44 which is average. Azina did two day shifts and the night shifts. At the end of the day she’ll have incubated for 19hr16. The eggs were not left alone for one second 🙂
Quiet days. Tom did a lot less incubating yesterday (a mixture of him not turning up and Azina saying no) and Azina ended up doing nearly 16hrs on the trot overnight. He did an average day today (3hr40) over three shifts. He also brought some pigeon but Azina wasn’t interested then. The last shot is of Tom on the lookout on a crane this evening. We could hear Azina calling to him but I don’t think he could. He eventually turned up to relieve her a while later. Before this we saw him very nearly catch a hospital pigeon (there was contact) he’d flushed.
He’s had a great day full of running around and flapping, with plenty of resting and preening in between. He can sprint along the runway at a fair speed! And does it sometimes while flapping (clip below for example).
He also pancaked on the wall for the first time, which means he now feels very confident on it.
First pancake on the wall
He again spent the night out on the wall, in the same spot at the night before. He hasn’t been in the box since Monday unless going after a parent. Which has given Tom the opportunity to go and do a bit of housekeeping in there. It’s needed!
Name. A few people have asked if I’m going to name him. To be honest I am quite happy calling him P6T (it’s easy to say, which is usually my criterion for giving a name) and I haven’t been inspired so far. Maybe something will come during fledging but for now I will stick to it.
Not much to report, it’s been fairly routine. Except for one intruder I witnessed on Saturday evening but who was very quickly seen off by Azina. No messing about.
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.
Where’s our food?
They were fed six times today, pigeon every time.
Azina feeding the chicks
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…