TO FLEDGE AND HATCH OR NOT?

The house sparrow families are still growing, albeit at different rates, with one almost ready to fledge and the other schedule to hatch.

I suspect the fledging family are reluctant to go away from the relative safety of the nestbox given the recent stormy, if warm, weather.

Perhaps when this weekend’s weather calms a little will we see the nest empty, although whether it’ll soon be a hive of activity again with egg laying, is another question.

The camera nestbox family, which has already fledged two house sparrow chicks, has three eggs being incubated by the parents – mainly the female.

I suspect we’ll see fledging and hatching from the two families with 24-36 hours of each other, so stay tuned to my twitter account for updates.

In other news the poppies, sunflowers and other flora are contributing to a large number of bees and butterflies visiting the garden to feed on the variety of nectar rich flowers.

This is really good news after the poor weather conditions in 2012 that had negative effects on both populations.

Some of the usual suspect garden birds are now showing up, complete with at least some of the chicks they have fledged.

This particularly applies to the blue tit and great tit families, although yesterday I saw my first fledgling robin of 2013, complete with a breast that had hints of orange/red to it. This bird was probably hatched and fledged earlier in the year and is now independent from its parents.

I’m expecting more of this years’ fledglings to start visiting the garden again now their parents have had chance to change their worn out ‘clothes’ for a set of new feathers.

How many will we see during autumn and winter? Let’s make the most of the rest of summer before we start to find out!