Welcome back to a new season ...
After installing a new camera, I was convinced that we wouldn't get a nesting pair this year !!
To be fair, they were quite late in setting up home, but everything else has moved on a pace since then.
The story so far :
I spotted the first egg on 5th April, which you can clearly see it here :
However, no further eggs were laid !!
On the 12th April, I noticed that this first egg had also disappeared!
To be fair, we did have that cold snap around this time, so maybe Mom was 'testing the waters' so to speak, before wasting any further effort in laying a clutch which might turn out to be non-viable.
It was also from this date (12th April), that Mom started to roost in the box overnight. Over the next couple of days she bought it lots of fluffy feathers and bits to line the nest.
I thought it was odd that with the nest complete and the overnight roosting that she still hadn't produced any eggs !!
It wasn't till the 21st April, that I then spotted, that she had been hiding them very well, as I spied 6 eggs!!
She laid one more egg every day till 25th April ...
I think the clutch is complete at definitely 9 eggs, (but possibly 10!)
She started incubating the clutch on the 27th April, so, all being well, we should start to see the first hatchlings around about 8th/9th/10th May ..
As she spends most of the day sitting on the eggs, Dad does pop in every now and then to bring her the odd morsel .. here he has bought her a lovely little spider for breakfast, but she obviously doesn't fancy it, and ventures out to find something else !
So, for now, it will be just a matter of watching and waiting until the hatchlings appear.
I will post anything of interest before then ...
