Gardening bear, Tommy was responsible for bringing it to our attention. He was dead heading some peonies in the border to the side of the lounge window, when he looked up and found himself face to face with a nestful of fledglings.
And they were no ordinary fledglings. After he'd retreated to a discreet distance and called the rest of us, our quiet observance of the comings and goings of the parents at the nest, revealed that this was none other than a brood of spotted flycatchers. We were so excited.
We wanted to watch them as much as we could, but didn't want to disturb them and upset the parents by peeking into the nest too often. As we could see the nest when we stood in the lounge and looked out the window, Jimmy had the brilliant idea of setting up a camera in the lounge.
Within the hour, fledgecam was set up and running and, being the B.U. wildlife expert, I was in charge of the filming, ably assisted by Curly.
It worked a treat and gave us a very priviledged view of the nest. We could leave the camera rolling and watch what it was filming on our TV screen from the comfort of our armchairs. We were hooked and learnt lots about these delightful, but rarely seen birds. We're sure you'd like to see a clip from the camera, so here is one ...
It was quite a sad morning when, 6 days after we'd first seen them, we looked out to find an empty nest and the fledglings flown. Unfortunately, they were up too early for us to witness them flying from the nest. What a sight that would have been.
We hope the youngsters are thriving, and, with a bit of luck, they might be back this summer.
Lots of love Chelmer, Curly and all at Bears Unlimited xxx
2 comments:
You also forgot to mention the fly catchers' nest to B.U. colleagues; your mind must have been on other things.
Thank you very much for sharing this with us. Shula was excited to watch the Mum feeding her babies, and so were her Mum and Dad! How clever of Chelma to set up the caera and film this treat. Wish we had done the same all those years ago when the Blackbirds nested outside the lounge window, but we were priveledged to see the fledglings fly the nest.
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