A setback

Yesterday one of the birds in box 3 disappeared and did not come back to roost last night. The other bird has had to go out and leave the eggs un-incubated several times, and has been gone most of today so things are not looking good. Maybe a hobby has had it's partner, but at this early stage there's no way the other one could bring the eggs to hatching and at the same time feed itself.  Box 2 is still incubating and still has a partner right now, and the starling in box 4 is still feeding young -  the most we can see are three. And a starling is roosting again in box 6, maybe it's the other parent of the youngsters. The swifts in box 1 seem to have given up bringing in feathers. It seems that this is a bad year for swifts, several people on the swifts local network are saying that numbers are down to a third of what they were last year, so it's not just us seeing very few in our immediate area. We hope that Box 2 will continue to brood their eggs and raise young.

Below, the seemingly abandoned eggs in box 3, with box 2 still incubating, and the baby starlings huddled invisibly in the bottom of the nest: