6 Apr 23 — Day I-28
Just two video clips today.
Exchange on the porch then Azina feels the need to preen a little before incubating.
A bit of time with Tom as he incubates and makes himself comfortable on the eggs.
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 😉
Happy 7 day birthday to the oldest chick!
Main thing today was that the fourth egg broke over night. Even though I couldn’t see what happened as it did under Azina and she had her back to the camera I can say that this egg was not viable. The chicks were covered in some residue that made them look like they’d been dipped in oil. Not their fluffy selves
Not that it seemed to bother them.

The rest of the day was the usual mix of sleep and feeds. There were 6 feeds today, at 7.23am, 9.12am, 11.19am, 2.35pm, 4.46pm, 6.33pm. Actually close to every two hours except for three hours once in the middle. Pigeon and Starling on the menu again.

Starling heads are starting to accumulate on the gravel again…
Lastly, something happened I’d seen or heard of at other sites but had never seen here: Tom feeding Azina ![]()

Shots for today:
Only five feeds today but they’ve all been long at around 30 minutes, except for breakfast, and the chicks were very full at the end of all of them. Only Pigeon on the menu.
Often feeds were the occasion for the chicks to practise their wing flapping, even the youngest one.

Azina brooded the chicks for most of the morning but left them on their own a bit more this afternoon.

Watch Azina go after a pigeon from the ledge. She came back empty taloned a minute later but look at that acceleration!
Shots for today:
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 😉
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:
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.