8.29 Chicks home alone
8.31 Chicks all preening
8.33 48 Stretches his wings and legs
9.01 Chicks walking around the box
9.03 Chicks flapping wings
9.22 The chicks go for a wander around the box
10.07 One of the chicks pecks at a carcass left in the box
10.21 Chicks stretch
10.46 Male returns to box and leaves prey, the chicks feed themselves
11.00 Chicks still eating
11.13 One chick sleeps while the other 2 preen
11.25 Second chick settles down for a nap
11.28 The third and final chick crashes out
11.30 All is quiet in the scrape as all 3 chicks sleep
11.55 The 3 chicks are all up and active
12.20 The 3 youngsters spend time preening and stretching
12.54 All 3 chicks sleep but 2 are woken by a fly, they spend the next few minutes watching it buzz around
13.00 chicks asleep or resting
13.23 tiercel arrived with kill, feeding eyasses.
13.26 falcon arrived , tiercel immediately departed, falcon feeding eyasses
13.38 eyasses sated, falcon feeding on kill
13.40 falcon departed
13.46 eyasses in huddle asleep on edge of nestbox
13.53 on edge of nestbox looking out
14.58 2 eyasses standing, one asleep
15.00 3 chicks awake and looking out
15.03 One chick preening two resting
15.10 All chicks settled
15.14 All awake and preening
15.16 Two settled in the sun, one remains in the shade
15.22 Both sunny chicks rapidly retreated to back of nest…..what scared them?
15.29 One chick returned to sunshine spot and another soon followed after
15.34 One chick comes back into the shade
15.36 One chick exercises and stretches their wings
15.37 Wing stretch repeated
15.39 All chicks standing and preening
15.42 All chicks standing in the sunshine
16.04 Two chicks sleeping the other preening in the shade
16.28 Chick in the shade has wing stretch and flap
16.29 Same chick has another wing stretch etc
16.31 And again
16.34 All chicks settled in the sun
17.00 All 3 sunning themselves on the scrape
17.02 One is doing a lot of wing flapping, thought it was going over the edge as it ran across the box, can't see the ring number, adult feathers are really prominent now
17.06 Same one still doing a lot of wing flapping
17.08 Adult arrived with kill, and seconds later the other adult took over , seem to be having a problem lifting it into the scrape, looks like a large catch, sitting on the roof outside the scrape , chicks are getting agitated and want their tea, this is getting hairy looks like one of the chicks is going to jump onto the roof where the adult is.
17.12 Adult is now on the scrape and feeding and one of the chicks has a piece of food to itself and is feeding in the corner adult is feeding the other two
17.21 Still feeding, the less mature one (49?) is having a very good feed, the other two do not seem too bothered. This seems to have been quite a large bird as they are still being fed at 17.29
Now feeding all 3
17.36 Not much left on the carcass, but still trying to get bits off, chicks have lost interest
17.46 Still getting small bits off the carcass but mostly pulling off what is left of the feathers, looks like it might have been a pigeon, still the odd bit being fed to the chicks or eaten by the adult
Adult has left and left the remains of the kill in the scrape, just a few bones
18.00 All quiet now
Thank you to Brendon Ollett, Julian Thomas, Debbie Colman, Barb Gardner and Chris Skipper for todays blog