A third egg.

28th May. We now have a third egg in Box 3. Incubation will start in serious now, so about 20 or so days will take us up to around the 17th June. Let's hope it all goes to plan!

 Yesterday the pair in Box 3 laid a second egg.  We're now hoping that tomorrow they may lay a third!

We have an egg!

 Our resident pair are still in Box 3 and the good news is that this morning they laid an egg. Hooray, it looks like they are serious about it this year. Here’s hoping that there are a couple more eggs to come then they can start incubating. In this short video you may be able to catch a glimpse of the egg centre picture whilst the birds are shuffling about

…and we hope that unlike last year, the egg will actually stay in the nest and not get chucked out. We also hope that the hobbys keep away, the last thing we went is that one of the adults gets taken by one. Watch this space! 

Here is another video filmed shortly afterwards, one of the swifts had been out flying with two other swifts
and had just returned and here you can see the changeover and the egg in the middle of the nest.

At last our single swift in Box 3 now has a partner and they seem very happy and settled together, both roosting together at night.  So far, no other swifts have attempted to enter any of the remaining boxes. Here are a couple of videos of the pair in Box 3:

 

 

 Our single swift is still roosting each evening and the usual ‘gang of three’ have been seen doing flypasts over the last couple of days but so far no other swift has entered Box 3. Lunchtime today, the Box 3 resident brought in some nesting material and can be seen in the video below sticking some of it down. Presumably this means that it does have a partner…somewhere! Apologies for the shape of the video today, must try to remember to do it in landscape.

 

Home again!

Hooray! One of our swifts returned to Box 3 yesterday evening. It came as a total surprise as we haven’t seen any swifts around here at all so far, but yesterday afternoon whilst I was out in the garden a trio flew over, screaming as they went by. But as usual I thought that they were probably en-route to somewhere else. It seems though that last night’s arrival may have been one of the three. Long-term readers of this blog will know that our home swifts normally fly about in a ‘gang of three’ so hopefully that’s them all back now. We look forward to more occupants in our boxes!