More wing exercises

Our two young swifts in box 3 are busy exercising their wings, or at least one of them is, while the other is looking out of the entrance hole. Notice how the rear swiftlet raises and fans it's tail out as well. This is the box with the entrance on the underside so the view is probably more difficult to see from their angle.

They are lucky, there is plenty of room in their nestbox (all our boxes are roughly the size of a shoebox with at least a 7-8" width to give plenty of wing space) but how do other swifts that are nesting in very small spaces or under roof tiles manage to excercise themselves like this?

According to the date they hatched they are due to fledge on around the 27th August...but they look nearly ready to me!

Two new chicks today

At last we have managed to watch and film a changeover of the sitting swifts in box 3 today and I'm happy to report that we now have two more chicks. It's been difficult to spot what's been going on in the nest so far, as one of the parents has been constantly on the nest since the eggs were laid. Here is the changeover, in which you might get a glimpse of the chicks:

and here is another one, showing the returned parent bird feeding the two youngsters:

Here is a brief video of the two chicks on their own - the parent is just sitting by the entrance watching flypasts:

Things are much the same otherwise, we still have two adults and three youngsters in box 2 and they are showing an interest in the outside world. I haven't seen any wing excercises yet though. Here they are in the nest with the two parents keeping guard at the entrance against any prospectors:

 

Box 1 continue to roost each night but tend to disappear from dawn to dusk. One of their abandoned eggs has been spotted at the side of the box.  There have been several flypasts this morning, at one stage there were 8 flying around whilst two adults were still in the boxes and box 5 has again been visited several times although there is still nobody roosting yet. So, not long to go until the swifts start to think about returning to Africa. We should keep the box 3 ones until around the middle of August though when the young fledge, all being well.  Unfortunately the swift season is all too short!

Doing well

Our young swifts in box 2 are doing well, growing by the day but they don't appear to have opened their eyes yet. Here's a short video of the parent having fed them this morning:

With the current good weather the parents are out most of the day, just coming back occasionally to feed. We reckon that the three youngsters will be ready to fly the nest on around the 30th July. Box 3 are still incubating, the date the eggs should hatch is around the 16th July with any luck. Box 1 are still coming in to roost each night but have not laid any eggs as yet.