Post by pete11 on May 8, 2022 21:52:59 GMT
Alas, it seems at least one of the 11 chicks has sadly died in the last 24hrs - spooling through all today's video files from 0430-2030 one dead chick is clearly visible a lot of the time, in the bottom of the nest cup - see where the red arrows are pointing to in this pic (you can just see the yellow beak):
Mum seems to be doing an inordinate amount of shuffling of chicks, burrowing right down into the bottom of the nest in what looks to be an attempt to mix the chicks up constantly.
I'm guessing this is to try and avoid any chick getting suffocated under the pile-on, which sadly doesn't seem to have worked entirely.
But I also wonder whether she can now sense something's not quite right and is maybe trying to find the source of the problem. I wonder how long she'll take to find the dead chick and remove it.
I say 'chick', but I'm pretty sure there may well be up to 3 dead chicks, as I can only now clearly see 8 chicks responding to the parents' feeding visits.
Oh well, I guess it would have been something of a small miracle for all of the original 11 to make it all the way through to fledging.
A couple of video sequences from today:
And some pics:
Mum seems to be doing an inordinate amount of shuffling of chicks, burrowing right down into the bottom of the nest in what looks to be an attempt to mix the chicks up constantly.
I'm guessing this is to try and avoid any chick getting suffocated under the pile-on, which sadly doesn't seem to have worked entirely.
But I also wonder whether she can now sense something's not quite right and is maybe trying to find the source of the problem. I wonder how long she'll take to find the dead chick and remove it.
I say 'chick', but I'm pretty sure there may well be up to 3 dead chicks, as I can only now clearly see 8 chicks responding to the parents' feeding visits.
Oh well, I guess it would have been something of a small miracle for all of the original 11 to make it all the way through to fledging.
A couple of video sequences from today:
And some pics: