the great escape

The two chicks left the nest on the morning of 23 May, ie 3 days ago. The picture at the top is the last one of them in the box. You can almost hear them, "You go first", "No, after you", "No, after you". In that amazing away that nature has, after 23 days in a small wooden box, they flew out into a totally different world and survived. The middle photo is later that morning on their very first flight, the juvenile tufts are still just visible, and the bottom photo was today, three days later. So they have survived so far.

helpful signs 1041

the church at St.Mary's, Ashbury (not Bratton Clovelly) in deepest Devon, and below the good ladies of Latchley (well, Lamerhooe really but it is the little village of Latchley in the background).

fallen nuthatch

on my first day out of the nest I wasn't much good at flying, and I wasn't much good at climbing, even with my spidery feet. Parent nuthatches were fraught with anxiety about their poorly performing off-spring

It remains very quiet for this time of year. There were no butterflies out today, and the flowers are weeks behind apart from one solitary marsh orchid. The great tit chicks are almost as big as their parents now but show little sign of leaving the nest apart from a few wing strengthening exercises. Sometimes it looks as if the parents are keen for them to leave ... much the same as the parents of any stroppy adolescents might be. Jays are normally very wary of people so it was unusual for one (as above) to keep still long enough to be photographed. And below, the Tamar keeps rolling on.

survivors

It has been hard going in the tit box. Only two out of five chicks that hatched have survived, probably because of the cold wet weather. Both parents seem to be able to find ample insects to feed the chicks. They have grown substantially and are now covered in downy feathers. They are beginning to flutter their wings to strengthen the flight muscles and no doubt will fledge soon. The lanes are now lined with cow parsley that lends them a graceful air despite the miserable weather.

In the Cornish jungle

with a bit of sun the orchard at Treven becomes a small scale jungle of wildflowers, including the relatively uncommon three cornered garlic (below)