There is not much doubt now that our surprise nestling is female. She is as tall as Gimbir and still growing fast. At four weeks, she is now shedding her down for her juvenile plumage and in a week she will be unrecognisable and look more like Gimbir (albeit larger). Gimbir, in his turn, is moulting too and daily sporting more sub-adult (blue-grey) plumage.
Prey has been coming in less regularly…usually two large prey (galahs and pigeons mainly) a day from Diamond, with smaller prey from Gimbir. She brought in a rather unusual prey this week – a buff-banded rail….they are quite uncommon and I would have thought difficult to catch, especially during the day, as quite cryptic, usually lurking in reeds. I would tell you what Gimbir is catching, but he prepares the prey so well, I’m having difficulty identifying them.
Sometimes adults arrive empty-taloned and if Girri is hungry, she will show her reaction…here she appears to be throwing a tantrum at the lack of lunch:
There are many other videos showing Girri’s progress on the Youtube channel.
I expect Girri to fledge in a couple of weeks’ time. Females usually fledge a little later than male nestlings as they mature more slowly. In the week leading up to the fledge, the parents will start bringing less prey. There are two reasons for this. If the nestling is a bit overweight, it’s a good idea to trim them down a bit before their first flight and, secondly, keeping them a bit hungry encourages them to leave the nest, which is probably a bit of a scary leap. Often the parents will fly past the box with prey to lure them out if they are a bit hesitant.