I don't know why the picture is all pink, all of our boxes seem to be in different shades!
Our parent bird was also back in box 2 with the two swiftlets. We hope that the mothering instinct is stronger than the migration instinct right now, the swiftlets are 3 weeks old today so have a couple of weeks to go yet.
We had a bit of action today - on returning from our morning walk we heard screaming coming from box 2 so we dashed upstairs and turned on the cameras. It was apparent that our parent bird had returned to feed the youngsters and had found an intruder already in the box. From their reactions it was obvious that the intruder was not the missing parent bird. Our bird was carrying a bolus ready to feed the youngsters but initially was unable to get past the intruder. You can see the feeding of one of the young, along with the subsequent ejection of the intruder in this video:
One of our neighbours was also out walking locally this morning and says he spotted a Hobby giving chase to 'our' swifts shortly before we returned but it managed to escape ... I wonder if this morning's intruder was the same bird simply taking refuge in our box, or maybe it was one of the birds from box 3?
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