The second hatching occurred at 9 am on 5th October 2019. Mother and chick both doing well!
Here is a link to the beginning of the hatch:
The third egg hasn’t hatched, and the longer it remains ‘whole’ the less likely it will hatch. Here Diamond is ‘wriggling’ as if she is trying to crack open the egg. Might be a bit uncomfortable for the two tiny chicks, but they seem to survive the ordeal! Video:
As in 2018 and 2017, we may have just two eyases. But I think that’s less pressure for the parents, especially in the drought. One sole chick is not so good as it doens’t have the warmth of the other little body when the falcon (the female) goes hunting.
Xavier is being an excellent father as usual. He’s preparing the prey very well (and making it hard for us to identify the species!) and it’s not just starling, but larger prey just as pigeons as well. Interestingly, Diamond has also left the box to go hunting herself and Xavier has made some tentative moves to brood the chicks. Here is the video of this:
Thanks to everyone’s help on the youtube chat to try and identify prey. An interesting, but somewhat fruitless task when the prey comes in headless, tail-less, wingless and featherless in most cases! But we will perservere!
Talons crossed for a third chick, but two is also a perfect number.
I start giving up for the third egg. We’ll have another “Eggbert”, but it’s great to have two nice and healthy chicks.
Thanks for your videos and updates, Cilla.
Don’t know whether it’s just my memory, but is Diamond trusting X with the chicks earlier (and for longer) than in previous years? I was quite surprised when he settled to brood them on the weekend.
There was a very cute moment earlier today when X was standing over the chicks and one of them had its sleeping head on his foot. He just kept standing there, very still…. “don’t want to disturb the baby…”