NestCam Update

 Today I rigged up an external camera to view the birds from outside the nest box and that's why there are now two images on the live video stream.  Unfortunately I won't be able to leave it out overnight or in bad weather as I haven't managed to protect the power supply from getting wet safely enough for my liking.  I'll probably put some recordings on the left side when the live camera is not available.

The three chicks seem to be doing pretty well and are now getting on top of the nest material quite frequently.  They are stretching and fluttering their wings quite a lot and I don't think it will be long before they fledge.  Hopefully the external camera might catch them as they leave the nest for the first time.  Currently all three are huddled together and seem to be asleep and I have a feeling they might be gone by tomorrow night.

This morning was quite stressing for Sarah and me as one of our cats (Millie) briefly caught a baby House Sparrow and had it her mouth for a while.  Luckily Sarah saw it happen and was out like a shot to rescue it.  After locking Millie up in the house, I managed to get the sparrow into a box where we had a look it.  At first it seemed OK but then Sarah discovered it had a puncture wound on its back.  It did attempt to fly across the lawn but didn't seem able to take off, so we kept it in the box for a couple of hours with some ripped up newspapers, mealworms and seed. 

We did ponder taking the sparrow to the vet but in the end didn't think they'd have much time for it.  Anyway, after a couple of hours we went back to the box and it had gone - as the cats had been confined to the house duriong this time, we'd like to think it flew off by itself having recovered from its ordeal.

It's going to be really hard ensuring that the cats don't catch our fledgling Blue Tits.