Getting eggcited

Keeping tabs on breeding birds needs a tidy and accurate notebook, good planning skills, a fairly good idea of how long these eggy and birdy things take to come to fruition, together with an awareness of how the weather and similarly unpredictable events can impact breeding success.

So I set out early to first check the Swallows at Hambleton this morning where I found 2 nests with youngsters the ideal size to ring and then a third nest with tiny young. A fourth nest used last year but not so far this year had a new feather lining ready for the adult to lay; a final nest in Molly the Border Collie’s stable contained eggs in the process of hatching with the adult sat tight, squeezed in the gap between roof and nest. A nest full of youngsters I ringed last week was pretty much bursting at the seams with young Swallows on the verge of fledging.

I ringed nine young with two nests to go back for on separate days next week, followed by a look at already used but now empty nests, and then a check for the second wave of eggs.

Swallow
Swallow
Swallow
Dunnock

A little drive and I was at Out Rawcliffe and checking Tree Sparrow boxes, perhaps the species with one of the untidiest nests of all birds. I put several new boxes up last week and already one of those boxes had an almost complete nest but no eggs yet, so I reckoned the pair of sparrows must have watched me load the ladders back on my car and then immediately set to with nest building. Unfortunately from the other boxes there was only one nest with any mini dinosaurs sizeable enough to ring, and then only one chick in a nest containing 4 un-hatched eggs; the large size of the single youngster told me that the remaining eggs could not hatch out now. It’s easy to speculate if the inclement weather of recent weeks is the cause of such failure but we simply don’t know for sure.

Tree Sparrow nest
Tree Sparrow chick

All the time I climbed and checked the boxes I heard the Curlews calling excitedly from the field beyond. It wasn’t so much calls of display, but rather cries of warning to youngsters hidden in the long grass close by. As I went to investigate, both adults went absolutely bananas at me, as only parent Curlews do, circling overhead and calling incessantly, all the while trying to lead me away from the chicks.

Curlew
Curlew

There wasn’t much point in looking to ring the youngsters as once the adults landed in the field I could barely see them, never mind pinpoint small chicks. Another visit next week should hopefully produce more young Tree Sparrows, and if the farmer has cut the field I may just catch up with more young Curlews like these from last year.

Curlew chicks