The Chicks Have Fledged!

I was making my breakfast coffee just before 8.00am this morning when I noticed a sudden flurry outside the kitchen door: a new bird had appeared on the shelf above the nest. It was a speckled brown colour, with a yellow beak and tufts of down above its eyes: the first chick had fledged!

It had gone in the minute it took me to get my camera; but it took almost an hour before its nest-mates followed. One chick climbed out of the nest onto the gardening clutter immediately adjacent, but then sat there for some time while the parent birds brought food for the other two....at which point, perhaps realising that the parents weren't giving it anything, the chick clambered back into the nest. One of the other two chicks subsequently clambered out of the nest in the other direction, promptly falling into the gap between two sprayer bottles, and had to clamber back. All three then took turns to stand on the edge of the nest, flexing their wings, until just after 9.00am when -- one after the other -- they decided it was time to go. But they didn't go very far: they left the nest, but then took up positions on various adjacent spots -- the rim of the shredder, the lid of the worm compost bin, a stack of flower pots on a shelf, a curl of hose outside the kitchen window, the handle of a spade....this was the big wide world, but what were they making of it?

At this point, however, with all the chicks out of the nest, the parent birds' behaviour changed -- they would fly in with food in their beaks, but largely to show it to the chicks to tempt them to travel further. But these three, unlike the first to leave, were very reluctant. For the next couple of hours, while we had a late breakfast and kept watch, all three remained in our side passage, with the parents feeding them occasionally but mainly trying to encourage them to move out into the garden. Two of them eventually did so, but the third seemed very reluctant, almost trying to hide itself away -- between the rear of a window box and the glass of the dining window, behind a collection of plastic saucers for plant pots, under the worm compost bin....at one point, it flew down into a bag of garden sand, requiring me to go out and rescue it. Finally, sometime after midday, the chick got up its courage, flew out from under the glass roof of the side passage and up onto the roof of next door's rear extension, where one of its parents rushed to greet it with a beakful of choice morsels. Next thing we knew, they were all gone, parents and chicks together.

The garden is empty of robins now but, before they left and while they were still encouraging the chicks, the parent birds went into what looked a lot like a courtship display, with the female atop the wooden arch in the garden cheeping furiously and the male flying around with a worm in its beak. Did they mate again before they left? It is the male alone who takes responsibility for feeding the chicks after they've fledged, while the female concentrates on feeding herself up to be ready for the second clutch of eggs normally laid each year; if they did mate, will the female return to re-use the nest outside the kitchen door?

We may (or may not) know in a few weeks' time. Until then, here are some pictures of this morning's fledging excitement.