Kestrels. Life in the box

Does the male pass the prey to the female near the nest, as I've not seen the male around much?

He seems to land on the roof of the nestbox and the perch immediately outside until the female forces him back into the fray! See previous page in this forum for photo of the female's favourite perch off-cam.

Hi Rains dripping : Through out the time the camera has been on the nest the male will land outside the box and the female will dash out screaming to grab the food. Now the chicks are much bigger both parent will be out hunting.

They're all looking very grown-up today.

Huh?! Heard the sound of squawking, looked at the cam to see mother (?) returned and one chick knocking back something really quite large in a single gulp! The other chicks didn't get a look-in. It then had an exploratory peck at the unhatched egg.

Just witnessed the same as you Dom.  Mum brought something in and it went 'down in one' by one of the chicks.  Is this normal?  If so, the food distribution is going to worry me now.

Have I gone totally colour blind or are we now viewing in black and white?

Quick moan:  Total pain having to refresh the video after 15 mins.  It was much better when it refreshed itself because if you get distracted or leave the room, then you could rely upon the sound to alert you to something happening.  Now when it goes down and if you remain distracted then you could well be missing something!

Now the colour's back!  Something dodgy going on here ...!

Hi Hazel, glad you are still enjoying the streaming. The main reason we have the 15 minute time out is to conserve the about of memory that is used, we are only allocated a certain amount and this helps keeps the usage down. The kestrels have been extremely popular and we had over 20,000 views from all over the world in the first week which is pretty amazing.

The colour hasn't been great today but we will keep an eye on it and see if it improves, if not we will get someone to look at it. We did a lense clean the other and that sharpend up the picture a bit.

I hope that answers your questions and that it doesn't spoil your viewing too much? Michael.

It is really great to see how healthy all four chicks appear to be, although they have seemed to be suffering from the heat a bit today. Still plenty of food coming in, The chicks are starting to feed themselves a bit aswell and those lizards don't even touch the sides.

Thanks for the info Michael - all is now clearer (albeit in 15 minute intervals and perhaps in black and white, lol)

Testimony to the chicks feeding themselves, at about 8 p.m., Dad brought in a small vole/shrew and, as Mum wasn't around, he dropped it in front of the chicks and he left.  One of the chicks picked it up, another got the other end of it, both were pulling.  The other two chicks got in on the action and the vole went all the way around the box, all chicks trying to peck at it.  Eventually they managed to rip it apart between them.

Freshly delivered:

After much tussling by all four chicks and it being passed around, it ends up with 'the dominant one' at the front again, clearly ripped apart:

They managed to polish it off but I think the dominant one got the lion's share.  I hope the others learn how to stand up to him/her.

My first go at capturing and posting screen shots - hope it works!