Night hunting, gift giving and mating

Apologies for lack of updates. I had fairly long trip to visit family overseas.

But to the news! Firstly, we have clear evidence that Diamond does sometimes hunt at night. We have seen her bring in a koel before (but it was dead, so could have been from a stash), plus microbats in the pre-dawn gloom, but this is a live bird (a grebe) so was definitely hunted at night.

And we also have evidence that a new season is beginning. Xavier has started to bring gifts of prey for Diamond. There was a starling in mid-May that she either did not see, or chose to ignore (!), then a larger prey on 27th May (unidentified, but definitely non-starling), eagerly grabbed (reluctantly given up). And we have heard and seen matings on the tower twice now this June, so things are definitely warming up. These early matings do not mean we will have early eggs. Eggs are not expected before mid-August.