April 4th 2003. Final preparations.
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log
of the blackbird's nest
April 4th 2003. Final preparations.
April 6th. Easter's early this year.
April 7th
April 8th,9th,10th. Let's start incubating!
April 12th-15th
From -4°C at night to 25°C in the afternoon.
April 16th: Mom takes some time off and dad makes his first inspection.
April 20th: mom becomes restless, hopping off and on.
Maybe she feels
April 21st, about noon: first one out of the egg,
7 hours later there were two. The female takes the remains of the eggshells
out of the nest.
April 22nd. "I think they all look like me." At 8 in the morning the
third and last egg hatched. Both mom and dad now are busy nursing:
She is doing the warming, while he's getting the food. Then he does some singing
in a treetop and she chirps a short answer. The chicks (and sometimes the female)
are fed by the male.
April 23rd. More fluffy hair. Blackbird Catering Inc.for all your fresh worms
,insects and waste-disposal...
April 24th. They're getting bigger and more colourful. Eyes still closed.
April 26th.The pace seems to quicken: the chicks are starting to fill the nest,
feathers become visible, eyes open sometimes.
April 27th. After a short rain, the nest was discovered by a magpie. Between
the meals, our blackbirds are both quite busy chasing it away, leaving the chicks
unprotected.
April 28th.. The inevitable has happened: the magpie has paid another visit
and this time it was for real: one of the chicks has been taken. The remaining
hatchlings still receive the full attention of both their parents.
April 29th. The chicks are getting bigger and move about in the nest, all covered
in feathers.
April 30st, early in the morning. Mom's out for breakfast, the chicks still
asleep.
A few hours later: all what's left of the little ones is a last dropping.
It seems to mark the end of a story we had hoped and expected to last longer.
It looked like the blackbirds were no match for a couple of magpies, making
the chicks part of the food-chain.
Somewhere in the shrubs mom's calling. Faithfully dad comes to the nest, his
beak filled with twisting worms. In vain he looks for the little orange funnels.
One wing limping he tries to lure us away, not from the now empty nest as we
thought at first, but from the only young surviving the magpie-attack. It's
hiding in another part of the garden.
May 2nd.Dad gives the secret away by appearing repeatedly, his beak filled with
worms. Moments later he shows up without them. The chick sits in some lavender.
Later that afternoon at our neighbours' the male sneaks under some bushes. Apparently
the place the chick is hiding.
May 3rd. On the lawn near the blackbirds' hidingplace a magpie is tearing apart
something fluffy...On inspection it turns out to be a duckling. All that remains
are his beak and bloody forehead. Noises in the holly behind us draw our attention.
It's the young blackbird again, ready to receive its meal. Dad's just about
to deliver when he spots us and leaves the scene, giving us the opportunity
to have a close look at the starling-sized young. On the ground droppings show
it's been here for some time now.
The parents tried once more, in a tree in our neighbours garden, but the magpie soon discovered it.
June 17th. A young blackbird takes a bath, just 2 metres away from the nest...