Kestrel fledging

Arriving this morning to an empty kestrel nest box, was quite sad (although we were expecting the 2 chicks to fledge any day) until this little fella peered in the office window. 

He then proceeded to explore the wildlife garden and compound, where he found lots of bits to climb up. Unfortunately his balance is not great so he kept tumbling to the ground (lucky he had not got too high) so we decided to help him out and propped some planks against the building and stores. Where he is now happily ensconced on top of the wood store. His sibling has been spotted on the pylon occasionally (not sure where he disappears too) and the male has been back with food. A peregrine sitting on the next pylon might be keeping the family a bit quite. But lovely to see them hanging around after fledging.

The kingfishers are still very active feeding their second brood, which are due to fledge around the 19, 20 July.

Green sandpiper have returned to the scrape and a pair of lapwing have 3  young.  The ringing group also found a cuckoo chick in a reed warbler nest which is nice to have confirmed productivity of a declining species.  We have also had occasional sightings of a juvenile and an adult peregrine, so they must have bred not too far away too.