Too hot for brooding.!

 

It’s so hot here today that the parent bird is not sitting on the chicks at all, so here’s another video of them in the nest. They are growing fast, must be the heat!

 

 

We now have 3 chicks!

 

A quick update - we were able to get a video this morning which shows that we now have 3 chicks in the nest.

A new baby!

 

We have a baby swift! We think it may have been there for the last couple of days, as it’s been impossible to see so far, but we could tell that there was something there by the way the parent bird was sitting. Instead of being sunk down into the nest it was hunched up a bit, a sure sign that it is brooding a chick. So here’s a video from this morning, you can get a brief glimpse of the chick on the right hand side of the nest, and the empty egg shell on the floor of the box. Not sure if there’s a second or third chick yet, but hopefully we shall see shortly. Notice also the rather large black feathers lining the nest...we think this is from “Stumpy’s” missing tail!

The new pair in Box 1 continue to use the box day and night and fly around in a threesome with one of our pair in Box 3, so we are very hopeful that they will return next year to breed.

 

 

 

 

Exciting news!

 

Our exciting news is that we’ve had a couple of prospectors over the last few days, practising approaches to box 1, so we were hopeful that they might actually enter it. They did so on Thursday, and then one roosted overnight on Friday. Last night they were both in, and here’s a video of them this morning (Sunday). They look to be fairly settled, so we live in hope that they will start nest building and return next year to breed.

 

 

Just over a week to go!

 

Incubation takes around 19-21 days, so we expect our swifts’ eggs to hatch somewhere around the 18^th June, so just over a week to go. “Stumpy” is still flying with other swifts in the neighbourhood and all seems well at the moment.

Still flying about

 Our tail-less swift is still flying about, seemingly with no trouble at all and managing to keep up with the other swifts in the neighbourhood. Here's a picture taken yesterday, out on the reserve. He's been out again today as well. He's been nicknamed "Stumpy"!

 

Everything seems OK

Well, our tail-less swift seems to be getting on alright so far, it's managing to get in and out of the box no problem and flying about as usual. We managed to get a photo of it on one of it's flights:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not sure how long it's going to take to grow another tail, it could be some weeks yet but so far so good!