Prey is coming in regularly now as Xavier proves his worth and Diamond either takes it (yum, pigeon) or rejects it (yuk, starling). As I still have no recording softward, prey identification is a bit hit and miss at the moment. If you have screenshots, I’d love to see them.
As Sue and others have discovered, mating has been frequent and noisy (but not visible, at least I haven’t seen it). Here we have a more sedate bowing session. Cheers Cilla
She goes on to do some scrape preparation afterwards, although in rather a desultory manner
Xavier has been doing a good bit of scrape preparation, some of it very diligent. His antics with prey are also highly entertaining. On Sunday afternoon he arrived clutching a tiny prey as if it were a lollipop. He was very keen for Diamond to see him with it as he left the box and returned with it again and again, and positioned himself each time in a rather noble pose, only to be disappointed by the non-arrival of Diamond. After X had spent nearly an hour in total waiting and posing time (with only the occasional nibble at the lollipop), Diamond arrived, grabbed the prey without so much as an admiring glance, and took off with it. Immediately afterwards, Xavier starting conscientiously scraping at the gravel. He really is such a funny endearing character! (he’d probably prefer “daring” or “noble”, but I just think he’s hilarious.
What? Me, anthropomorphise? Ha ha ha, guilty as charged, M’Lud…
So great to have sound again on the live feeds, and exciting to think that eggs might start appearing before too long. I caught a bit of scraping yesterday evening – not sure who it was but suspected it might have been Xavier.
Love Sue’s story.
Up till now the scrape-building has been pretty casual. On Wednesday 15th, however, Diamond started doing some serious scrape-time. She spent about an hour in there on Wednesday afternoon. On Thursday morning she was in the scrape bowl for about 40 minutes. Starting to get serious about nesting…