It’s hard to keep track of them, and which is male and female (most of them are male we think), but they all seem to be having fun in the sun.
Category: Animals
The Sign of Mr B
Social distancing
Frisky Frogs
Wren
First flight
The two fledgling stock doves couldn’t get out of the barn owl nest box (due to the entrance being too high up) so we took the side off to help them. Here’s one of them mustering up enough courage to make its first flight. Its nervousness may be partly related to the nest box being about twelve feet off the ground.
You can just make out the other fledgling on a branch next to the nest box. It had just made its first flight and was encouraging its sibling.
That wasn’t for you
A few days ago we left food out for the barn owls for the last time: if they didn’t come for it we knew they had dispersed. The food didn’t go to waste though: the next morning a greedy buzzard saw to that.
Wriggly season
Flying and more
Twenty eight days old and the two stock dove fledglings have learnt to fly, though they’re still living in the nest box.
What we hadn’t noticed was that one of the parents had returned to nest with the two fledglings. This wouldn’t normally happen (they would only return to feed them) and we have found out why: the adult, now clearly female, is sitting on a new clutch. Stock doves do lay more than one clutch each year, but it is a bit unusual to not even wait for the first to leave the nest.
You can just make out an egg under the female dove.
It’s in the meadow and it’s brown
Hungry doves
Big bird
Young doves
Crack crack
Sooner than we expected: the stock dove eggs have hatched to reveal two tiny yellow wriggling balls of feathers.
Shared care
The two stock dove eggs are being well looked after in the other barn owl nest box, with both parents taking turns to incubate them. Not long before hatching!
She’s back
When the stock dove left the nest a few days ago (after unsuccessfully incubating a single egg) we took the opportunity to check over the nest box and move the camera. Within a day the stock dove returned and is now sitting on two new eggs. No sign of the male so she’s in for a long self-isolation. Quite determined behaviour!